Neighbours
by Shivver
Summary: Moving to new town and job means making new friends. You never know who - or what - you might meet. (AU #2 for "The Actor", story #5)
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note** : This is the fifth story in AU #2 for my story _The Actor_. This is set after _A Choice of a Lifetime_. It's actually set after "One End, One Beginning", which is the sixth story in the series, but both stories read better if you read them in reverse chronological order.

 **Spoiler Warning** : Requires _The Actor_ and _A Choice of a Lifetime_ ; won't make much sense without them.

* * *

It took all of Will's strength to place one foot in front of the other and keep plodding down the sidewalk. His sinuses were thoroughly clogged, his sight was blurry - the darkness of the spring evening didn't help him at all - and his cough racked his entire body yet was not strong enough to dislodge any of the congestion in his chest. Normally, he would have considered the evening to be pleasantly warm, but he shivered in his jacket as he searched for some relief.

Perhaps if he hadn't been so sick when he'd arrived in town on the train, he would have realised that he should have had the taxi take him to a hotel, where he could have had a soft bed and a concierge who could have fetched him medicine or at least directed him to the A&E. However, his fogged brain had latched onto the concept of getting home, and once he'd gotten the key to his new terrace house from the manager, who had held her hand over her mouth and nose as a shield whilst she had hurried him out of her office, he'd dragged his bags to his new place. As soon as he had gotten in the door, he told himself he'd go out for medicine later and collapsed in a corner on the floor. It never occurred to him that he'd feel worse after a little sleep.

He'd woken up to an empty house, confused about why he was lying on the floor under his jacket, until he'd remembered his mobile ringing on the train, the removal company calling to tell him that the lorry had gotten in a pile-up just outside of York and his furniture and belongings would be held up for a number of days whilst the damage was assessed and the insurance payout was calculated. He'd only felt a little sick when he'd gotten on the train, but by the time the call had come through, he had been unable to focus on anything, and now he was in an unfamiliar town, ill, with his brain working on a tiny fraction of its capacity, and no relief in sight. He must look deathly, which explained why the first two people he'd approached for directions to a chemist's or an A&E had fled, pretending to not have heard his pleas. The woman in the house next door had peered out at him at his knock, thinking he couldn't see her behind the gauze curtain, and pretended to be out until he'd wandered off.

With rows of houses stretching down the street as far as he could see, which, admittedly, wasn't very far, there was nought he could do but continue to beg for help. He dragged himself to the next door and pounded on it, unable to see the otherwise prominent buzzer next to it. Swaying on his feet, he leaned against the jamb and waited for what seemed like forever. He really couldn't tell.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, and after a few clicks of a lock and a doorknob, the door cracked open, a blurred face peering out. "Hullo." The voice, decidedly male, was neutral but kind.

Will drew in a breath to speak, but only succeeded in coughing violently and wetly. "I'm sorry," he finally hacked out. "I can't, I mean, I need... I'm new... Guh... Could I have some paracetamol?"

The door swung open. "Oh, dear." The man stepped out and guided Will inside. "Please come in. You look a fright." Will let himself be led in and pushed to sit down on what he imagined was a couch. "You should lie down. I'll put a kettle on and get you some medicine."

"No," Will protested with a feeble wave of his hand. "I can't. I'll just be going." He pushed himself to his feet and toppled, the man catching him and gently forcing him back down on the couch.

"Oh, no. You stay right there." Footsteps told Will that the man was leaving the room, but they stopped. "It'll take me a moment to find the medpack. I'm not sure where I put it. But I'll be back soon. Lie down and try to sleep." And he was gone.

Will sat back in a daze, coughing intermittently and shivering. He pulled his jacket closer around himself, but that was the last clear thing he remembered.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

Will opened his eyes to a room darkened by drawn curtains, the dim light peeking around their edges telling him it was dawn or dusk. Tucked under a thick blanket, he was lying on a couch with a fluffy pillow under his head. It took him a moment to remember where he was - "someone else's house" was all he knew - and why. Sniffing experimentally, he found he was exhausted but otherwise both his airways and his head were free and clear. The clap of a closing book informed him that he wasn't alone in the room; the other occupant must have realised he was awake by the change in his breathing.

"Good morning. You look better." The raspy tenor was lightly Scottish.

Will sat up on the couch to get his first good look at the man whose house he was in. With a narrow face and ruffled brown hair, he was thin and lanky, his shirt and jumper doing nothing to give him any heft. He was perched cross-legged on the ottoman, a book in his lap and a pair of wire-frame glasses on his nose. Will noticed that the wide room contained only the couch and the ottoman, devoid of all other furniture or decoration.

"I feel a lot better. Thank you for looking after me." He ran his hand through his rather oily brown hair. "How long have I been out?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'out'." He stroked the book absently as he spoke. "You were quite delirious for a bit less than an hour, talking a lot of nothing non-stop. But you drank the medicine and the tea, which was a blessing, and then after you dropped off, well, it's been nine hours and twenty minutes."

Will frowned in surprise; he felt like he'd been out for days. "Nine hours? Is that all?"

"Well, nine hours and eighteen minutes, to be more exact."

He held his head in his hands in remembrance of his earlier suffering. "The way I felt, I thought I'd be sick for a week. How can I feel fine now?"

"Maybe it was a twenty-four hour flu." Will's host clapped his hands on his thighs. "Are you hungry? I've not the ingredients for a full English breakfast, but there's eggs and bread."

Will looked up in surprise. "Oh, no, I don't want to put you out."

"Not at all. Won't take but a few. Relax." He grabbed his book and jumped to his feet.

"I'm Will. Will Sampson. Thank you for helping me." He stood up, slightly unsteady, and held out his hand in greeting.

Surprise flickered across the man's face, and after a beat of hesitation, he stepped forward and grasped the proffered introduction. "David. I'm David. You are welcome, any time." The iciness of his hand made Will wonder if he was still feverish.

"Tell me, if you don't mind." He hesitated a moment. "I'm not in Scotland, am I? Because I could have easily missed my stop and ended up in Aberdeen."

David shook his head. "You're not in Scotland. Just the house of a Scot." He spun and disappeared into the hallway. Will followed him, past the stairs to the upper level and an empty room with its door wide open, into the kitchen. A large room with wide windows that must make for a sunny breakfast in summer, its only furnishings other than the usual appliances and counters was a plain wooden table and a single chair. David dropped the book on the table, then his glasses on the book, and moved to put the kettle on. "Go ahead and sit down. Rest up."

"I feel perfectly well. I can't really believe it." Will stepped to the window and gazed out into the garden, which was starting to emerge from darkness due to the rising sun. Thinking for a moment, he frowned. "Wait. I was asleep for nine hours? It's got to be seven at the latest then."

"6:13," David replied as he placed a skillet on the stove and turned on the gas. He then fetched some eggs from the fridge.

Turning back to his host, Will bit his lip. "You're doing way too much for someone you don't know, getting up early like this."

David placed some bread in the toaster and began tending the eggs. "I didn't. To be honest, I don't sleep much, so I was already up."

"Oh." As the man cooked, Will wandered over to the table to glance at the book. Hardbound in leather, it had no title, though the cover and spine were decorated with a gorgeous motif of gilt interlocking circles and intersecting lines. It seemed like an intrusion of privacy to open it, so he sat down in the chair to wait. "Insomnia?"

"Nope. Just don't need to." After wrestling with the skillet and spatula for a moment, he sighed. "I hope you like your eggs somewhere between over easy and scrambled. I could practise this for a hundred years and never get it right."

"I'm not picky. You've already done too much."

"It's nothing. Just a bit of eggs and toast." He slid the eggs onto a plate, then turned to pour the hot water as the bread finished toasting. "So you live around here?"

"Just moved in. I'm..." Will laughed. "Well, I think I'm two doors down. I suppose I can't be sure of that. 153 Kenwick?"

David set a mug of hot water and a box of teabags in front of him. "Two doors down," he averred, then turned back to the stove.

Will began to fix his tea. "Thanks. Got here yesterday. New job in about three hours." Reflexively, Will glanced around to re-check the time, but resorted to pulling out his mobile when he couldn't find a clock.

The toast popped. "What do you do?" David asked as he arranged the last part of the meal on the plate.

"Programmer, for a web development studio here in town. I wasn't really enjoying my old job doing financial software, so I thought I would try my luck up north. Newer tech, more exciting."

"I can understand that." David walked over and slid the plate in front of Will. "Go on, tuck in. Oh! Butter." He retreated to the fridge.

"This looks great." Will scooped a bit of egg into his mouth with the fork. "Excellent. Thanks, mate."

David returned with a tub of butter. "No jam," he explained as he placed the spread on the table. "I'm sorry, but I don't keep much food in the house."

"No, this is too much, really." He waved the fork in protest of the man's hospitality.

"Well, you can't have any food in your house, if you've really just arrived."

Will shook his head. "I don't have much of anything there, actually. I got a call on the train. The removal van with my stuff got in a pile-up. It'll be at least a week before it gets here."

Crossing his arms, David sighed in commiseration, his lips pursing sadly. "It's just one thing after another, isn't it?"

"Always is. Nothing I can do." Will toyed with a scrap of egg before scooping it up with his fork. "At least I've got the stuff I need in my bags. I'll find myself a hotel after work."

"You're welcome to stay here, if you like."

The offer took Will by surprise, and he placed his fork on his plate before replying. "Oh, no, I can't do that."

"Why not?" David shrugged, his eyes wide with an aura of reasonableness. "I don't really use the downstairs much. You can tell by the couch and that's all. And it'll be good for you to be nearby when your things finally make it here."

Will waved his hands at the suggestion. "That's really good of you, mate, but I can't. I've taken up too much of your time as it is."

"It'd be nice to have some company for a bit."

Though David's tone was neutral, Will sensed a shade of loneliness and a suppressed interest in becoming friends in the way he tried to seem casual and uninterested. Admitting to himself that he would rather save on the hotel bills, he agreed. "Okay. That'd be convenient. But just until my things get here."

David smiled. "Excellent. You can have all of the downstairs, and take anything you want in the kitchen." He whirled in place and opened the drawer he had been leaning against. "I've got a spare key in here, I think."

"Do you have a bus schedule? I need to figure out when I have to leave for work."

"No, I don't. But you can use the car." David rummaged a bit more among the mess in the drawer. "Ah, here. One house key and the car keys." He turned and held them out to Will.

"Don't you need it?"

David shook his head. "I rarely use it. Just to hit the Tesco every so often. Go on." He wiggled the keys, and they clinked enticingly.

"How will you get to work?"

"Already there." David smiled sheepishly. "Don't really got a job. Doing my own projects. Kind of an inventor, you might say."

Will was impressed. "Really? What kinds of things?"

David shrugged. "Nothing that works. Not yet, anyway. I'm getting there." He stepped forward and placed the two sets of keys in Will's hand. "There. Finish your breakfast and get your bags. I'll get you some towels and soap. You'll want a shower before you go to work."

"Thanks, mate. I really appreciate this. Oh!" He began searching his pockets, sighing with relief as he produced his own set of keys. "Good. I was afraid I might have left the keys in the house last night. I was really out of it."

"You were. But that's all past. It's a pleasure to meet you, Will."

"Likewise, David."


	2. Chapter 2

The breakfast and the hot shower did wonders for waking Will up out of his illness-induced exhaustion. It still amazed him how quickly he had recovered from such a severe flu, but his apprehension about going to his new job for the first time supplanted those thoughts. He congratulated himself on his decision to bring two jackets and a selection of shirts with him, rather than pack them in the removal van, as it had resulted in him actually having decent clothes to make a good first impression. His confidence was bolstered when he spied David's car. A sporty German import, it was clean and gleaming, possibly newly waxed. For a moment, he wondered how the unemployed man could afford this house and this car. Perhaps they were the limit of his expenditures, as he certainly didn't spend on furnishings or decor.

Will's first day at work was uneventful, filled with the usual orientation meetings, a sheaf of human resources and legal forms, and the setup of his workstation. The day went by in a whirlwind of new faces and process documents, and by the time he returned to David's car, he felt as exhausted as he had been when he'd woken that morning, possibly because he was still recovering from his illness, and he was grateful that the commute was not long. He might not be coming back to his own home, but he was looking forward to an uneventful, relaxing evening.

Thus, he was stunned when he walked into the house and the drawing room where he had slept the night before, looking to collapse on the couch, only to find that it had completely changed. The couch was still there with its ottoman, but it was flanked by two end tables with lamps casting a soft light. Opposite the couch on an entertainment console stood a flat-screen television; Will estimated that it had a forty-inch screen. A cushy recliner sat in one corner. The only thing that hadn't changed was that there were still no purely decorative items in the room.

Will stared at the room for a very long moment, then retreated to the hallway to try to find his host. Peeking into the other room on the way to the kitchen, he found that it was also now furnished, with a bed, nightstand and lamp, desk and chair, and wardrobe. Upon entering the kitchen, he noted a second chair at the table which didn't match the original one and a new microwave oven and a new toaster on one of the counters. Next to it stood a few other things that hadn't been there before: a container of pasta, a bread box, and a spice rack.

"Hello, David?" he called out, not expecting an answer. He strode back down the hallway and was about to climb the stairs when he hesitated. David hadn't said anything about only staying downstairs, but he definitely got the feeling that he wouldn't be welcome upstairs. "Hello?" he called again.

After a couple of bumps, a Scottish burr floated down to him. "Ah, Will. Welcome back. Be right down." He heard a door close, then the door just at the top of the stair opened and David emerged, wiping his hands with a grease-stained towel. "I hope your first day was brilliant." He trotted down the stairs as he stuffed an end of the towel into a back pocket of his jeans.

"About what I expected. The real work begins tomorrow. You've been busy." He gestured at the different rooms. "Where'd all this come from?"

"Various shops in town. Bit more comfortable now, I think?" He eyed Will for confirmation, but then strode into the kitchen without waiting for any kind of response. "I got more food in, too. Or we can order take-away, if you prefer. I'm not much of a cook."

Will followed him. "You shouldn't have done this. You've spent way too much just to give me a place to sleep for a few days."

"Oh, I've been meaning to do this for a while now. It's just that with only me here, it didn't seem worth the bother." He clapped Will on the shoulder. "Don't fret it. I'm glad to finally have a reason to kit the place up a wee bit."

Will didn't quite know how to accept so much hospitality graciously. "Well, okay, I guess."

"I moved your bags into the bedroom. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all, thanks."

"How does spaghetti sound? I think I can make that. You go unpack." David snagged an apron that was hanging from a hook behind the door and tied it on over his plain gray t-shirt.

Will glanced behind the door for a second apron and was unsurprised to not find one. "Let me help. Not that I cook either, mind you."

"Nah." David grimaced and fiddled with a thick brass chain around his neck that had gotten caught uncomfortably under the apron strap. "You're the working man. You should get your clothes out before they get wrinkly and then relax."

"Okay. Let me know if I can help, though."

"Sure."

Will retreated to his new bedroom and proceeded with emptying his bags and filling the wardrobe, the simple task giving him time to think about his new temporary roommate. David seemed nice enough, but his generosity, both in taking in a very ill stranger and furnishing his house to make that stranger comfortable, was unbelievable. Will almost felt like Hansel and Gretel, lured in by a candy house that was too good to be true. He didn't sense any malice or ill intent in his host, but then appearances could be deceiving. Smiling, he snorted at himself for his paranoid thoughts. David was definitely a little strange, but he seemed friendly and kind, and Will decided he should count himself lucky for stumbling upon someone willing to help him through this first week. _Perhaps_ , he thought, _he's one of those eccentric genius inventors. A Tesla, maybe._

He managed to get most of his things put away by the time David called him for dinner. His shirts were already a bit wrinkled, but he decided he could get away with looking fashionably tousled. He joined his host in the kitchen, where he had set out spaghetti and salad for both of them. A quick sample of each told him that David was a tolerable cook: while the pasta was rather chewy, the plain sauce was good enough, and it would have been difficult to ruin the simple garden salad. David, however, didn't agree, and, after two bites of the spaghetti, pushed his plate away from him and gulped down half of his glass of water.

"I won't do that again." Scowling slightly, he cleaned his teeth and lips with his tongue, then sipped his water again.

"I think it's pretty good." Indeed, Will had already finished half of his serving.

"Well, there's plenty more if you want it. I think..." David stared at his discarded plate. "I think I don't like tomatoes anymore. Or maybe it's tomato sauce. I don't really remember." He shrugged and pulled his salad in front of him. "I can do lettuce and cucumber, though."

Hunching over his food to hide his confused expression and appear busy eating, Will eyed David as the other man worked on his salad. He decided that the term "eccentric" was definitely applicable. "I'm sure I'll have seconds. Are you just going to eat that? That's not much."

"It's plenty for me."

"Now I see why you're skin and bones." Will, though stocky, wasn't overweight by any means, but he seriously wondered if David, who was taller than him by at least two inches, wasn't half his weight.

David peered down at his own torso. "Am I really so thin?"

"Mate, you'd disappear if you turned sideways."

Toying with a leaf of his salad, David shrugged. "Think I've dropped a bit in the last two years. Change in diet and all that. I've always been told I should eat more. I suppose there's plenty of pasta. Bit of butter and some cheese should make it good." He jumped from his seat and fetched himself another plateful of food. Sampling it after returning to the table, he nodded. "This is pretty good." He sniffed, then shook his head. "Actually, the pasta's really poor." The men's eyes met, and they started to laugh.

Will dropped his fork on his plate. "Ah, the bachelor life."

David nodded, a silly smile still on his face. "If you can weather my cooking, you'll come out the stronger man."

After that little bit of an icebreaker, Will found that conversation got easier. David inquired about Will's decision to move north, and he talked about his old job and the area of London he'd lived in, and how he'd gotten tired of the enormous city and the long commute, as well as the monotony of the work itself. Moving had been a big decision, as he was leaving friends and family, but the job was a good opportunity and the pay was good, and, he had reminded himself, he didn't have to stay there forever. "I plan to learn new technology, try out different development methodologies, and meet some new people. At the worst, it'll only expand my resume."

David shook his head. "You don't have to convince me. That's what I'd like to do. Travel. Learn new things. See everything I can. One day I will. Couple of years' time, hopefully."

"You seem to have a pretty open life at the moment, at least," replied Will, gesturing vaguely at the rest of the house with his fork.

"I suppose. I'm a bit tied down here with my projects. It's slow work."

"At least you have a roof over your head. Must be nice to own your house. I've only rented."

"Oh, no, I don't own this house." David went on to explain that his brother owned the house and was letting him live there. It was convenient for him as well, as the house needed a caretaker, though David hadn't really paid much attention to it.

"Well, it's good for you, at least. And it's not like you're causing much wear and tear."

"No. I keep to my room mostly, except to eat. And I try to be conscientious about the kitchen." At that, he stood up and collected the dishes, depositing them in the sink to be washed.

"Let me help with that." Will followed him, but David waved him away.

"Appreciated, but no. Go ahead and relax. This won't take but a few minutes, and then I think I'll get back to work."

"Thanks for the dinner, mate." Will flashed a grateful smile then, walking out into the hallway, turned back and stuck his head into the kitchen. "You don't happen to have wi-fi, do you? I'd love to get online."

David had already begun scrubbing a plate. With a thoughtful expression, he rinsed his hands and blotted them on his jeans. "Wi-fi... Yeah, I can do that. Hold on a tick." He trotted past Will and up the stairs, into the room at the top. Will retreated to his room and set his laptop up on the desk.

A number of minutes later, David appeared in his doorway, tapping on his mobile. He held it out toward the computer and tapped it again, and it emitted a strange electronic trill. It fell silent after a couple of seconds and he glanced at its screen. "There you go. All set."

"Great." Will turned back to the laptop to pull up the networking dialog. "What's the network name and password?"

"Oh, no, it's done. You're hooked up."

"What?" That didn't make any sense: computers connect to the wi-fi network, not the other way around. Will opened a web browser and hit a random bookmark, and the page opened normally. "How'd you do that?'

David shrugged. "That's just how I have it set up. You have a good evening. Back to the dishes, and then to work. If you need anything, just yell." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the upstairs.

Will was still confused and managed a tolerably acceptable, "Thanks, mate," before his host quit the room. He checked the networking dialog and looked over the settings, finding nothing unusual: the laptop was connected to a network named "tardis" and used standard security protocols. The antivirus software didn't report any viruses or trojans, and a few visits to some HTTPS websites didn't cause any browser security alerts. He shrugged and proceeded to use the network without concern, filing the strange incident away in the back of his mind.

As he had hoped, the evening turned out to be very relaxing. He spent some time making contact with friends and family to let them know he had arrived safely, spending a couple of hours first chatting online and then hanging out in his favorite online game. He settled into bed a little after midnight without encountering his host again.


	3. Chapter 3

The next few days followed the same pattern as the first. No matter how early Will woke up, David was always already awake, ready to prepare a simple breakfast for him. Will noticed that he never made anything for himself, but then he had plenty of time before and after to eat whenever he wanted. At work, Will spent his time learning his new job, and had a little trouble adjusting to the faster-paced development cycle for web applications. Every evening, he returned to his temporary home to find David fixing dinner. The meals were always very simple and ranged from not particularly tasty to downright terrible. On the second night, David mentioned that he was learning how to improvise while cooking and was rather pleased with the results, enjoying his meal happily, and Will knew better than to complain about the quality of the free food. After every meal, his host retreated upstairs, leaving Will to his own devices. Will felt very much like he was living at a bed and breakfast, and at one point during dinner, mentioned that to David.

Confused, the man arched an eyebrow and cocked his head. "In what way?"

"Well, you've given me the run of the house, and you're providing all the meals, whenever I want them. The only thing you haven't done is made up my room each day."

"Oh, I thought you wouldn't want me poking through your things. I could tidy up, if you want me to."

"No! No, I don't, thanks," he coughed out his reply. He certainly didn't want his host to do any more than he was already doing. "But that's what I mean. You're doing way too much, mate."

David traced his tongue along his upper lip before replying. "Is that... Is that too strange?"

Will was taken by surprise. "What? No. It's unusual, and bloody generous, but not strange."

Toying with a piece of broccoli, David seemed to be barely listening. "I know I come across as weird. I try not to. I didn't used to be, I think. I can't really remember."

This conversation was taking a fast leap off a cliff, and Will wasn't sure what he should say. "You can't remember how you used to be?"

"No. Do you?" David searched Will's face, as if he were trying to find any connection, anything he could understand in the other man. "Do you remember how you used to think when you were younger? Such as when you were a teenager?"

"Well, no, but that was years ago." A thought occurred to Will and he blurted it out without thinking. "Did you have an accident or something?"

Chewing on the tip of his tongue, David stared at him for few seconds, almost as if he was testing out the idea in his mind. Then he smiled with an air of relief. "Yeah. Yeah, you could say that. An accident. It affected me." He tapped his temple. "I don't think like I used to."

Placing his fork on his plate, Will leaned forward in sympathy. "Hey, I'm sorry, mate. I didn't know. What happened?"

"I'd really rather not."

"Oh, sure. I understand." He nodded. "Are you okay now?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's been a while, over two years." He leaned back in his chair and tugged his ear. "You're the first person I've told. Really, the first person I've talked to, well, other than... well, my family. It's kind of why I'm here. My brother thought it would be good for me to be on my own, to start making my own way. Not that I've done a good job of it." He laughed. "Obviously, since you're the only person I've really met. I just stay in the house."

Will frowned. "You're a fine bloke, David. And you don't seem to have a compulsion to avoid people. Why do you keep to yourself?"

A sheepish smile spread across his face and he gazed down at this hands. "I've tried a little. Talked to people in the queue at the Tesco. At the park. I even tried joining a book club for a while, but that didn't work. People think I'm too weird, I think. They look at me strange and eventually avoid me. I'm probably too much like... Well, I've tried not to be, you know? I've worked really hard to censor the first things that flit into my head."

Will leaned back in his chair, frowning at David in disbelief. "You're doing that now?"

"Oh, yes." He gazed out the window. "I have to."

"No, you don't. You should say what you want." Crossing his arms, he thumbed his chin. "Well, unless it's offensive, I suppose. Is it?"

"Well, no..."

"I mean, there's something to be said for discretion, but you shouldn't try to change yourself based on what you think other people are thinking about you." He paused to catch David's eye, and only continued when the man finally looked at him. "The good ones will like you for who you are."

"I suppose..."

He shook his head. "Don't try so hard to be someone else. I wouldn't sweat it, mate."

David bit his lip, then threw his hands up in frustration. "I'm trying to not be someone else. I'm trying to be me. It's just that 'me' is a very odd person."

Will shrugged, settling into a stance of mock defiance, determined to bully his friend into standing up for himself. "Yeah? So what? What's wrong with odd?"

David seemed to have run out of arguments and sat back with a slightly defeated air. "I guess you're right."

"Of course I am." Will tapped his thumb on the table. "So, if what I've seen isn't really you, what are you like?"

"What?" David frowned in disbelief, that one expressive eyebrow arching high. "How am I supposed to describe my own personality?" Will simply sat back and grinned at him. "Well, I... I don't know. The word 'bubbly' comes to mind. Excitable. I could run my gob if I let myself." Will managed to hide his first reaction to his description. David so far was anything but excitable and talkative. "But there's a second voice in my head that wants me to be quiet and reserved and solemn. Sometimes that voice is so loud." He snorted a laugh. "Maybe 'mercurial' is the best word."

Will shook his head. "We all have that. Different impulses telling us to act in different ways. No one's consistent. Don't second-guess yourself, mate. Just be you."

David laughed, mopping at his eyes with one hand. "That's harder than it sounds. I don't know who I am."

"You don't need to. Just be whoever you are at the moment." An idea sprouted in his mind, and he wagged a finger at David. "Hey, you haven't been out much since your accident, have you?"

"No..."

"I didn't think so. I think you need to meet more people. The blokes at work, they head out for beer after work on Fridays. They invited me along, and I think you should come with." David gasped in surprise, and Will could tell a refusal was coming. "It's nothing special, just hitting a pub with a bunch of computer geeks. They said tomorrow's will be at a place called Marco's."

David held up his hands, shaking his head. "Oh, I can't do that."

"Yes, you can, and you should." Will tried to make it sound as reasonable and easy as possible. "It's just a few drinks and meeting some people. I won't know most of them either, so we'll be equal. What do you say?"

"No, I really can't."

Will heaved an overly-dramatic sigh. "I'm only going to ask one more time. Won't you join us tomorrow night?"

David rubbed his fingers in his lap. "I... I guess I can. I guess I should, really."

"Good on you, mate! Come down to Marco's at 6:30, then."


	4. Chapter 4

It didn't surprise Will at all that David wasn't at the pub when the work crowd arrived, which admittedly was long before the 6:30 he'd mentioned. He was pretty sure that if he had been in his spot, invited to a gathering of strangers, not to mention unsure of himself, he would have gotten cold feet and neglected to show up. However, he wasn't going to worry about him. Though he might be having some difficulty relating to people, he seemed to have his life arranged the way he wanted it. It didn't do to push someone along faster than they wanted to go.

The group from work settled in cushy armchairs and couches around low coffee tables, away from the flat-screen tellies that were broadcasting some football game or other. Will found that much to his pleasure, most of his fellows fell on the geeky end of the spectrum, preferring to discuss the latest science fiction films and video games rather than sports and politics. Even the female coworkers, who in Will's previous company had nearly nothing in common with him, joined eagerly in the conversation, about the new superhero films and television programmes that one of the comic book companies was planning for the next two years.

Will had almost finished his beer when the first plates of food began to appear. Glancing up at the waitress who was placing a basket of chips in front of him, he spotted behind her David standing near the entrance of the pub. From his expression, he seemed relaxed and enjoying himself watching the activity around him.

"'Scuse me," Will mumbled as he rose from his seat. Crossing the floor to meet David, he glanced at his mobile, and noting it was only a couple of minutes after 6:30, he nodded at his friend's punctuality and slipped the phone back in his pocket. "Hey, you made it!" They grasped hands and Will clapped him on the shoulder.

David looked pleased to be welcomed so warmly. "Well, of course. I said I would."

"I thought you might change your mind."

He shrugged. "I considered it, but you're right. I need to do this." He glanced around again, smiling. "This is good."

"Oh, by the way, I got a call from the removal company." He patted the pocket his mobile was in. "They'll be here tomorrow with my things and a quote on the compensation."

"Brilliant! I'm glad for you, Will!" David grinned broadly.

"I told them to call at your house for me. And then I'll finally be getting out of your way."

"It's been no bother at all."

Will clapped David on the shoulder again. "Well, come on."

As Will turned to lead him to the rest of the group, David grabbed his arm. "Er, Will? What did you tell them about me?"

"Nothing really. Just that you're the guy whose house I'm staying at and that I owe you for it." David looked uncomfortable at that thought. "No, I really do. But come on. Let me introduce you around, and then I'll order you something, if you want."

Will led him to the table he'd been sitting at. "Hey! This is David. He's the guy that's giving me an actual bed to sleep in, instead of a cold floor. David, this is, well, everyone." He began trying to name each person and explain what they did at the company, doing a tolerably good job considering he'd only met some of them once. Ben was Will's fellow programmer, Markus and Mary were designers, Pete was a server admin, and the one person Will couldn't remember, Amy, was a graphic artist. David favoured each one with an eager smile, thrusting a hand forward in greeting as he murmured, "Nice to meet you" or some variant thereof each time. After the introductions, the party shifted seats to make room for the newcomer as Will asked David what he wanted.

"Oh, a pale ale, if you don't mind."

"Sure." He headed off to the bar as David took the seat that was offered to him.

Pete spoke up first. "So, David, Will said you're an inventor?"

Taken aback, David ran a hand through his hair as he tried to come up with a suitable reply. "I... I suppose. Though I think I'd have to actually build something that worked to take that title."

"So, no copyrights yet. No billion-quid genius idea that we could get in on the ground floor of?"

David laughed. "No, nothing's panned out yet. Though, to get a billion quid, I'd have to build something like a time machine."

"Well, there you go! Easy!"

David's smile was guarded. "I'll get right on it."

"No, really." Markus leaned forward to get David's attention. "What's it like, working on realising new ideas? In my work, the ideas come from our clients, and whilst I have to design them, I know what it's coming from and what framework I have to work with."

"Well, for the most part, I spend my days with my nose in a book. It's all research, learning what other people have done before you and trying to see where you can take things in different directions. And you want to find out what questions they're asking." He wagged a finger at Markus. "That's where the real ideas come from."

"What do you work in? Electronics?"

"I dabble in a lot of things. Currently doing some work in power management."

"Move into software, will you?" Ben had been gulping his beer and brought the glass down on the table with a thump. "Create the world's greatest web browser so that I don't have to develop for IE anymore."

As Mary groaned in sympathy, Pete shook his head. "That won't help. You've already got Chrome, and people _still_ use IE. The problem isn't providing the perfect solution. The problem is getting people to adopt it."

"Aye, and there's nothing I can make that would help with that." David shrugged in mock helplessness.

"Help with what?" Will had just returned and sat down next to David.

"Getting people to give up IE in favor of Chrome," Mary explained.

"Ah. Nothing short of mass mind-control will get people to stop using IE." He turned to David, grinning mischievously. "You can do that, can't you? Mind-control device, easy, right?"

Surprised, David stared at his friend for a moment. His eyes caught the pub lighting, sparkling golden for a moment, before he rubbed over them with his hand, then gave a humourless grin. "Well, sure. Mass mind-control coming right up. I'll have that ready for you by lunch tomorrow." His hand wandered to his chest, where he fingered what looked like a round medallion hanging on a chain, hidden under his shirt, its shape apparent under the cloth.

"Now there's a waste of a mind-control device." Markus shook his head. "So many better things you could do with something like that."

Ben shrugged. "I'd just be happy with the death of IE, myself."

"It always starts like that, though," interjected Amy. "You have the best of intentions at first, but then you're tempted to do things for more selfish reasons. I think half of all sci-fi villains start that way."

Popping up straight in his chair, David lit up more energy than Will had seen in him previously. "Oh, yes! But that's what makes them interesting! It's not that they're evil; it's _why_ they're evil. Take Voldemort, for example." He gestured expressively as he spoke. "For the first few books, he was just the evil overlord, doing insane things, but just a background character. Then you learn about his family and his upbringing, and that's when you start to understand him. He only becomes a true character then, and it's his contrast to Harry that makes the books. It's the path to the dark side that you want to see."

"Nah," replied Ben. "Voldemort didn't need all of that to be cool. He had the whole world shaking in its boots and was almost immortal. He was only defeated because he thought he was invincible."

"See, you only care about what he did and how evil he could be." Mary grabbed a chip and waved it at him. "But motivation rounds him out. It's when he becomes a real person in your mind that you start to relate to him and you get drawn deeper into the story. And the fact that similar upbringings caused him to develop exactly opposite to the way Harry did makes Harry all the more heroic."

"I never looked at it that way," Amy murmured.

"The one that got me was the bad guy in the fourth book." Pete stared at the ceiling as he tried to remember. "Barty? Yeah, him. His story in the book was tragic, having turned evil after the way his father treated him, and then they gutted him in the movie, made him just this psycho Death Eater. No personality. Just crazy."

David coughed, hiding a smile behind his hand. "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. You need that _why_ to make a character truly interesting. Otherwise, he's just empty and flat." His hand switched to stroking his chin. "I wonder, what would it take to make a completely normal, everyday person to do something horrible, like commit a murder in cold blood? Now there's a character I'd like to explore."

"Revenge, maybe?" offered Ben.

"Nah, not just revenge," replied Mary as David's drink was placed in front of him. He thanked the waitress and took a long swig from it. "This is what I was telling you last week, Markus. The bigger the change in a character, the bigger the motivation has to be. It'd have to be something deeper, something closer to home. Like, killing your wife's murderer."

"Or your child's killer." David placed the glass back on the table and leaned back, listening intently to the ideas being discussed.

Amy leaned forward. "Especially if the killer got off unpunished."

"Or if this isn't his first murder. Maybe he's a serial killer." Mary waved another chip at Amy as she thought. "If he could rationalise killing the killer by thinking that he was preventing more deaths, then he might convince himself he wasn't doing it just out of revenge. That's the worst evil: when the evil person thinks he's doing good."

"See?" David grinned in triumph. "Now there's a story I'd love to see. You should write that."

Mary laughed. "Me? Oh, no, no. I'll write it when you build that time machine."

David pointed at her. "Deal." He grinned at her with a wink. "But really, you should! You're brilliant at developing character and motivation, and you've got the basis of a great story right there."

Mary had taken a drink of her beer and nearly choked on it at David's praise, waving him away with her hand. "Oh, no, I'm not a writer. I just pretend, talk about designing characters and plots. I mean, everyone dreams of writing the greatest novel ever, don't they? But there's a chasm between dreaming and doing, both in motivation and talent."

"But that's just it. It's not about writing an instant classic. It's about giving voice to what's in your hearts. Talent is irrelevant, when you're writing from here." He tapped his breastbone. "What you need is that little spark to inspire you. I know you have beautiful, intricate worlds inside, just waiting to burst out onto the page. You've got to nurture that impulse. Creativity and storytelling is the way we can explore the entire universe without ever leaving Earth."

The others at the table stared at David, silent, the chatter from the rest of the pub grating in their ears. David's eyes flicked from one stunned face to another, and spots of colour rose on his cheeks. Clapping a hand to his forehead, he ducked his head down. "Oh, I'm sorry. I've done it again. I get overenthusiastic sometimes."

"No, that was brilliant," breathed Mary. "You made me want to run home and start typing right away. But you're the one who should be the writer. You've the most extraordinary way with words, and you seem to like that sort of thing, character motivations and all."

David looked up, a tentative smile on his lips. "Oh yes. I love stories and characters. Always have. I was, I mean, I wanted to be an actor, back when, because I wanted to be those characters and tell those stories."

"You know, mate, you still can." Will nodded at him. "You should take your own advice. I bet you'd be brilliant at it."

David gazed down at his hand with a small self-effacing smile. "Nah. Those are days past for me. I hope to get my stories from travelling, when I can. Someday."

"It doesn't have to be someday," Ben remarked. "Plenty to see right here." He turned to Will. "I know you've only been here a few days and haven't had the time to explore the town, but you should. I'll take you around, if you like. Lots of historical buildings, a museum of military history, if you like that sort of thing, ruins of the Norman keep. And the old church is nothing to scoff at."

"Part of the grounds are restricted though," Amy added. "They discovered an ancient Roman fort buried deep below the church, and they've opened an excavation. They don't allow anyone near except for paid tours, but it's fascinating watching the archaeologists work."

"I hadn't heard that," remarked David, perking up at the news. "I'll have to go see that sometime. I wonder if they accept volunteer help? Doing some hands-on work, seeing just how the buildings and the artefacts have survived through time, that would be brilliant!"

"That's university work, so they might not, but science museums usually will welcome volunteers," Mary suggested. "I'm not sure what might be the closest one, but the one in Glasgow is an easy enough distance."

"Oh, fantastic! I never thought of that." David's grin glowed with excitement.

"You're into all kinds of things, aren't you?"

WIll detected a not-so-subtle note of interest in Mary's question, and he eyed David for his reaction. The man still had that wide smile on his face as he answered. "Oh, yes! There's so much to see and learn, and never enough time, don't you think?" It didn't surprise Will at all that David didn't pick up on Mary's cue. Glancing away, his eye was caught by Ben, who flashed him an amused smirk. Will nodded back and rolled his eyes.

Mary shrugged. "Well, they say you have to make the time to do what you want, not just let life pull you along."

"I suppose that's true. None of us will have the time to do everything we want, will we?" David picked up his pint and took a long drink.

Will wagged a finger at him. "You at least have control over your own time. You could probably make as much time as you wanted to do that kind of thing."

Gazing up at the ceiling, David nodded slowly. "I suppose you're right. I suppose I do have more time than most people to devote to other things. Perhaps I'll pursue the idea further. It's a way I can help, isn't it?"

"I'm sure it will be appreciated." Amy smiled at him.

"What did you say earlier?" Mary thought about the quote. "'Giving voice to what's in your heart'? This is just another way of doing that."

David smiled. "You know, you're right. You're exactly right. I will head down to the excavation site tomorrow and inquire, and if that doesn't work, I'll research some science centers. Well, I'll do it on Monday. I understand I'll be helping someone move into his new house tomorrow." He jerked his head to the man next to him.

Pete caught on first. "Oh, is your stuff finally getting here? Do you need help unloading?"

Will grabbed a chip and popped it in his mouth. "Finally, yes! And no, I don't need help. After all this, I'll make sure the removal company puts everything just right."

"That's right, you will." Pete held up his glass in a toast.

"And I'll finally get out of David's hair." Raising his glass but in his host's direction, he flashed him a grateful smile.

"Oh, you've been no bother. I've liked the company." David thumbed his own chest. "If I had my choice, you'd stay."

"Well, then, I guess I'm saving your brother his scuffed floors."

"You have a brother?" Mary interjected, and Will had to stifle a laugh at her transparent interest in David.

"Yes," David responded immediately, then amended himself. "Well, it's his house I'm staying in."

"How nice! Does he live in town, too?"

David wriggled uncomfortably. "Er, no. He's, um, he's passed on." His eyes dropped to his hands around his empty glass amidst a chorus of "I'm sorry" and "Oh, David."

Will reached around and patted him on the back. "I'm sorry, mate. I didn't know. I wouldn't have said..."

David leaned back in his chair, letting the glass rest on his knee. "It's okay, Will. I knew it was coming, but it's still a wee bit raw, you know?"

"I know. But hey, if you need anything, if you want to talk..."

"Yeah, thanks. I'm fine." He smiled and nodded, trying to communicate that the solicitousness was unnecessary.

"Were you close?" Mary asked.

"Aye. Actually, here." David reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. His fingers danced over the touchscreen and he turned the image that came up to the table.

"Oh!" Mary jerked back. "Your twin brother!" She took the phone and peered at the picture of David, his brother, and a blond girl, all three mugging for the camera. With identical impish grins, the two men were leaning toward each other to fit in the frame, whilst the one on the left had his arms around the girl, who was lying against his chest with wide, shining eyes, her ponytail splayed over his brown pinstripe jacket. Mary leaned in closer to look at them, her eyes darting to the man in front of her a few times. "I can't tell. Which one is you?"

"On the right. John's on the left."

"Oh, okay." She stared at it a moment more, then passed the phone to Markus. "You look like you were very happy."

"I was."

Markus did the same thing as Mary, repeatedly comparing both men in the image to the one in front of him. He murmured "Remarkable" under his breath. "This couldn't have been taken too long ago. No more than a couple of years."

David nodded. "Much less. Do you remember Christmas when the big red planet appeared in the sky? That's about when John died. That was taken about two weeks before."

Mary was horrified. "Only four months then. Oh, I'm so sorry!"

"Don't be. As far as I'm concerned, he still lives on, in me, you know?" He pressed a fist to his chest. "As long as I'm alive, he'll never be gone, and I plan to stick around for a very long time."

"Why, that's a lovely thought!" Amy reached across to pat David's hand.

When the phone reached Will, the similarity between the two men stunned him as much as it had everyone else, and he leaned in to inspect them. Their facial features were exactly the same, even down to the tiny wrinkle lines around their smiling eyes, which normally develop individualistically even on identical twins. He scrubbed a hand down around his mouth as he tried to find any difference between them, but failed: he almost felt that the image had been graphically manipulated, with two pictures of David spliced into it to make it look like a pair of twins. He was quite sure that other than the fact that they wore their hair differently, there was no way to tell them apart. He passed the phone across David to Ben and returned to the conversation, which had moved on a little while he had ignored it.

Markus was pointing at the phone. "May I ask, who's the girl? His girlfriend?"

"My sister, Jenny."

"Oh! I hope she's doing okay, with this and all."

"I assume so. She's gone, too." At the horrified expressions on everyone's faces, David waved a finger. "Oh, no! Not like that. She left, not long after that photo. I haven't talked to her since."

"Doesn't she know that...?" Mary couldn't quite finish the question.

"Oh, she does. That's why she left. That was always the plan."

"I'm sorry?" With those two words, Mary voiced the confusion that everyone else at the table felt: how did they know John was going to die in two weeks, and if he was terminally ill, why would Jenny leave her ailing brother so soon before he passed?

David rubbed the back of his head. "It's... complicated. I'm sorry, but I really don't think I could explain it all to make it make any sense."

Will raised his voice above the general chatter. "I think we're prying too much into your family's business, I do."

Mary startled. "Oh, no. I'm so sorry, David. I didn't mean to."

David smiled with relief. "Thank you."

Will elbowed him companionably, though he wondered, if his brother was dead, how could he still own the house that David was living in?

The group ended up staying at the pub quite late, chatting and laughing, and at one point, Markus remarked to Will that it had been a long time since the last time the after-work crew had stayed out so late together. Will was pleased with the results: he felt quite welcomed by everyone and had gotten to know them a lot better, especially Ben, with whom he would be working closely. They'd discovered a mutual love of poorly-dubbed martial arts movies and had promised to get together to share their favorites some weekend after Will had settled in.

Will was also pleased to see David fitting in comfortably and seeming to enjoy himself in the company of these strangers. He began to see why his friend had described himself as bubbly, as he showed more enthusiasm in conversation during this one evening than he had the entire week Will had been living in his house. He was also pretty sure that this wasn't caused by the alcohol: after finishing his pint, David chose not to order anything else to drink, or eat for that matter, even when the party ordered their dinners. Will decided that if his friend was normally this open and excitable, then he'd definitely been holding himself back all this time. He hoped that David would continue to feel more comfortable with himself in the future.

He did notice that attention did seem to gravitate toward his friend quite a bit, though he wasn't sure if it was due to his natural charisma, of which the man seemed completely unaware, or if it was simply because Mary was trying to turn his head. With any new topic of conversation, she tried to get him to state his opinion on it or relate a story about it, and while he always responded kindly, it was with no special interest in sharing himself with her. She seemed rather crestfallen by the end of the evening, and after bidding a polite but controlled farewell to the group and to David in particular, she left with Amy. It wasn't long after their departure that the rest of the party broke up, and Will and David left together, stepping out into the cool air of the spring evening.

"Here you go, mate." Will held the keys out to David.

"Oh, you can drive if you want." They strolled toward the parking lot behind the pub.

Will tossed the keys to him. "You drank a lot less than I did."

"All right." Fumbling with the keys in the dark, David thrust the fob toward the car, unlocking the doors. "Thanks for inviting me out, for getting me to do this. I really needed to. I haven't had a night like this in years."

"Any time, mate. They do this every Friday, they said. You're welcome to join us."

"I might do. I might just do," he murmured.

As he opened the car door, Will happened to look up at his friend. David had paused before getting into the car, biting his lip as he considered the idea with a contemplative but satisfied air, and it seemed to Will that David's eyes were shining, actually glowing with a subtle golden light, glimmering in the darkness. Then the man shrugged and began to climb in, and the moment was over, his eyes suddenly normally shadowed. Will scanned around the parking lot and spied a streetlight fifteen metres away, and decided to attribute what he saw as a trick either of the light or of the alcohol he'd consumed. The sudden roar of the engine as his friend started the car brought Will back to the present and he slipped in, pulling the door closed after him.

It only took a moment for David to pull out of the parking lot and set them on the route home. "Your coworkers are a friendly bunch. That made it all easy."

"'S funny. That's what Amy said about you. Actually, I think she used the word 'candid'."

David glanced at him, puzzled. "Really? What does that mean?"

"I think she meant that you say what's on your mind without worrying what people might think about it, but without being blunt or offensive."

Keeping his eyes on the road, his friend threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, that's exactly the opposite of what's going on in my head. I'm chanting to myself every second, 'Don't be weird. Don't be weird.' I didn't exactly succeed in that, too many times to count tonight."

Unseen by the driver, Will rolled his eyes. His friend worried too much. "You did just fine."

"Well, I'm glad they liked me. I tried my hardest."

"You succeeded very well, you know. Probably too well." David glanced at him with a confused frown, and Will stared at him in amazement. "You really didn't notice, did you?"

David's gaze was back on the road. "Notice what?"

"Mary?"

"What about her?"

Will couldn't keep himself from laughing, and he had to stifle it with his hand. "I think you need to work on reading the clues, mate. She was falling over herself trying to get your attention."

"She _what_?"

Will was enjoying David's clueless reaction. "She didn't look at anyone else all night and barely spared Amy two words, and normally they're thick as thieves."

David dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. "You're imagining things. We just talked a bit, is all."

Will mimicked David's scratchy Scottish tenor. "'Just talked a bit, is all.' Why do you think they left first? Mary got frustrated that you didn't even notice her enough to turn her down. It wasn't Amy who decided it was time to go." Will cast a sly sideways glance at David. "If you had responded favourably at all tonight, it would have been her in this seat instead of me going home. If you hadn't opted for the motel down the road, that is."

"Oh!" In the headlights of the oncoming cars, Will saw the blood drain from David's face as his jaw dropped open. "I didn't... I mean, no, but... I can't..." Will bit his lip hard to keep himself from laughing at his friend's discomfiture.

"Relax, mate. If you're interested in her, I'm sure this evening didn't hurt anything. And if you're not, well, she'll get over it." David still looked completely put out, so Will decided to needle him more. "Now, if it was Amy that piqued your interest, she wasn't so obvious about it, but I think she'd've responded, too."

David sputtered at that suggestion. "No, you don't understand. I can't do that. That's not a good idea. It never works."

"Oh!" Will finally realised what David's problem was, and he tapped his head back against the headrest. "I get it. Sorry, sometimes I'm a bit thick. But actually, that's a good thing. I'll just let her know it's women, and not just her. It's better than letting her bark up the wrong tree."

"What?" David glanced at Will in confusion before returning his eyes to the road. "No, I'm not queer."

"You're not?"

There was a slight pause before he answered. "No?"

It was Will's turn to be thrown off-balance. "You don't know?"

David shrugged. "I haven't thought about it."

Will turned to stare at his friend. "You need to _think_ about it?"

Another pause. "I guess?"

Will sat back in his seat. "Hey, mate, I'm sorry. That's fine. If it's not important to you, then it's not."

They pulled into the space in front of the house and the two men got out. David leaned against the car, his arms folded on the roof, and chewed his lip. "You know what? You're right. Tell Mary I'm queer. If in fact she was really interested - and I still don't believe you - it'll be easier for her, and it doesn't bother me at all. Maybe I am queer. I didn't used to be, but that doesn't matter now." He shrugged, completely unconcerned with the question.

Will tried to hide his perplexity as he listened to David's odd stream-of-consciousness. It puzzled him, but if the man was comfortable with his uncertainty about his sexual identity, he wasn't going to prod him about it. "You got it, mate."

David pushed off the car and circled around to join Will, locking the vehicle with the fob as he walked. "Come on. I got a tub of custard in. We shouldn't let it survive the night, I think, and you can tell me more about how completely oblivious I am."

Will laughed as he fell in behind him. "Sounds like a fine evening."


	5. Chapter 5

The next day, Will woke to a call from the removal people, informing him that the lorry would arrive within the hour. Pulling on jeans and jumper, he proceeded to the kitchen to make himself some toast and tea, refusing David's offer of a heartier breakfast to fuel the day's work. The man had been sitting at the table, reading a book in the morning sunlight.

"Nah, thanks. I just want something light." Transferring a couple of slices of bread from the bread box to the toaster, he lit the burner under the kettle.

"The water's hot, so it won't take long." David closed his book and pulled off his glasses, toying with them in his hand.

"They called to say they'll be here soon." Will fetched his tea things as he spoke. "I expect it'll take a nice long time once they get here. They're supposed to have the insurance statement with them. I can't wait to find out which of my things actually survived."

"That'll be fun." The sarcasm in David's tone communicated that he knew it would be anything but. "Well, call me when they start unloading and I'll help with getting you set up."

"No need to interrupt your day. I'm going to make sure they set up everything just right."

"Then call me and we can sit and drink beer while they do all the work." He winked.

"All right." Will pulled out his phone. "What's your number?" David told him, and he dialed it up. His host's pocket started beeping and he fished out his mobile, tapping the screen to silence it and then save the contact.

"Gotcha. Brilliant." David popped to his feet and snatched up his glasses and book. "I'll be upstairs. Call if you need anything."

"Yup," replied Will as the kettle began to sing.

Not long after he finished his breakfast, the arrival of the lorry signaled the beginning of a very long day of hurry-up-and-wait. It took quite a while for the removal men to clear out enough space in front of the house to park the huge vehicle, then they wanted to go over the insurance list in minute detail. By the time they had reviewed it to both their and their client's satisfactions, they wanted to go to lunch, and thus, the actual unloading of the lorry didn't begin until the early afternoon. Will found that David's help was invaluable: he could trust his friend to direct where the items would be placed in the house while he stayed with the lorry and inspected each object as it was unloaded, to make sure it matched its description on the insurance list. David also dashed back to his own house periodically to supply everyone with adequate refreshment: beer for themselves and pop for the removal men, with the promise of beer after their task was done.

By late afternoon, the lorry was gone and all that was left for Will to do was to pack up his things in David's house and cart them over to his own new home. David stood in the doorway of the guest room as Will began emptying the wardrobe, stuffing his clothes unceremoniously into his suitcase. "I doubt a trip two doors down will be enough to wrinkle this stuff badly."

"Probably not. I can carry an armload over."

"Nah, I got this. I don't have much here." After shuttling all the clothes over, he discovered that not folding the clothes meant they were much bulkier, and even after letting out the expanders, he found he needed to lie on top of it to force it closed. David came over and helped him close the zipper.

"There. Thanks." Popping off the bed, he turned to the desk. "At least the computer is easy." He detached the power cord and stuffed it into the laptop bag. "I called the ISP earlier this week, so they should be installing service by Wednesday, they said. At least I'll be on the web at work."

"You'll get wi-fi from over there."

"Doubt it. Even if I do, the signal will be arse." He closed the laptop and slid it into the case.

"No, should be nice and strong. You don't really need to get your own service."

Will laughed as he piled the laptop bag with the suitcase. "Thanks, mate, but I'm not going to piggyback on yours. Not to mention I've got my gaming tower and my _Minecraft_ server to connect up. Oh, the toilet!" He trotted past David down the hall, returning in a moment with his kit, which he placed on the suitcase. "This is pretty much it."

Turning to David, he held out his hand to his host. "Thanks, mate, for everything. Taking care of me when I was sick and letting me stay here this week. It's too much."

David grasped the proffered hand with a warm, genuine smile. "Don't mention it, Will. It was my pleasure."

Pulling him into a brief hug, Will clapped him on the back. As they stepped back, he exclaimed, "Oh, your key!" and began digging in his jeans pocket.

"Oh!" Holding his hands up in front of him, David shook his head. "You keep it. Any time you want to come by and hang out, come right in."

Will held the key out to him. "No, it's your house, mate."

"Right. And I say, you keep that and come visit. I'll get a streaming service, if that'll help."

Will laughed. "All right. Okay." He dropped the key back in his pocket. "But you have to come over, too, when I get all set up."

"I'd like that." David's voice was soft with a hint of shyness.

"Then it's settled." Will slung his laptop case across his body, then picked up the suitcase and kit. David preceded him out of the room and trotted ahead to open the front door for him, standing back to let him through. Once outside, Will turned back to his friend. "Thanks again, mate."

"Bye, Will."

Will trudged down the street to his house. He'd enjoyed his brief stay with his new friend, but was glad to finally be able to move into his own place, to have his own space to inhabit. No matter how hospitable David was - and Will could not have asked for a better host - Will always felt he was intruding. He was looking forward to setting up his bedroom and his lounge, and relaxing in his study playing his favourite online game. There really was no place like home.

Behind him, the tall Scot leaned against the jamb of his front door, the tip of his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, watching his friend cart the last of his belongings to his new house. Sighing, he retreated indoors before the object of his attention turned onto the walk to his own front door.


	6. Chapter 6

Will spent much of Sunday unpacking and setting up his household. Most of his essentials had survived the trip, and he was especially pleased that both of his computers were none the worse for wear, but there was a good amount of things that the insurance money would be replacing. The most expensive thing was the projection telly; he decided that he wasn't going to replace that, along with his sofa, until after his first full paycheck. He did, however, borrow David's car to visit the furniture stores in town to replace his computer desk, which he spent a portion of the afternoon putting together, and wardrobe. He unpacked what boxes he could, then turned to the much more pleasant task of setting up his computers and network. Testing his laptop, he was delighted to find that David was right, that it still had excellent internet access at this distance from the router, and he set it up to stream one of his favourite films while he worked.

Work the next day was normal as expected, though he felt a bit more camaraderie in the atmosphere, having gotten to know a number of his coworkers quite a bit better on Friday. He especially felt a kinship with Ben, though he wasn't sure if it was because they had chatted the most at the pub or because their desks were adjacent. Still, he felt a lot more comfortable talking to them and asking "newbie" questions now that he knew them a lot better.

The bus stop closest to Will's house was two blocks away on a different road, so he found himself walking past David's place on the way home. This evening, the silver sportscar was gone, the space on the street empty. _Tesco_ , Will thought to himself with an amused grin; the man really did never use his car to do anything else. Will had to do his own shopping run that night and would be back on the bus after dinner, and shrugged his disappointment that he wouldn't be able to piggyback his own trip on his friend's. An hour later, Will emerged from his own house to head out on his own shopping trip, and walking up the street, he noticed that David's car was still gone. Frowning, he glanced at the dark windows of the house. _Wonder what he's up to?_

On his return, the silver car was back in its normal spot, though the house was still dark. Will trotted home and put his groceries away, then headed to his friend's house and knocked on the door. He heard a very faint, unintelligible call from deep inside, then saw the lights pop on progressively closer as footsteps grew louder, obviously coming down the stairs and striding across the wooden floor. The door swung open. "Will! Good evening!" David flashed a wide, toothy grin. "Come in!" He stepped to the side to welcome his friend.

"Long time no see," Will quipped as he entered.

"Did you have dinner? I can whip up something if you like."

"Oh, no, I've eaten, thanks."

"All right." David headed into the lounge and plopped into the armchair while Will settled in his accustomed spot on the sofa. "All settled in now? I hope you haven't been too inconvenienced by the loss of your things."

"Nah. The only thing I really needed was the computer desk, and I bought a new one and put it together yesterday." He wagged a finger at David. "Thanks for letting me borrow the car for that."

"Any time, Will. Feel free to use it any time it's out there."

Will shook his head in disbelief. "You're too generous, mate. So, you know, it felt strange to be finally moving in a week after starting the new job. I was thinking of maybe having a party at my house, when I finally get it all set up, just to settle in. What do you think?"

David nodded as he considered the idea. "Sounds like fun. Inviting your workmates over for some beer and music then?"

Pursing his lips, Will stared up at the ceiling, pretending to consider his options. "No, actually, I was thinking much smaller, say, test the new telly by inviting my neighbour for dinner and a couple of films, maybe. To thank him for his hospitality."

"Oh!" David was genuinely stunned. He opened his mouth to speak but his first words stuck in his throat and he cleared it, tugging on an earlobe as he gazed up at the ceiling. "Well. You're welcome, always, but you don't have to do that. I don't want anything from you, really."

Will laughed, shaking his head. "You're a strange one, mate. I'm not trying to repay you for anything. I'm just thanking you, and I want to hang out with my friend. Is that so hard to believe?"

His eyes dropped to his hands in embarrassment. After a moment, he nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess?" His shy smile told Will that he was extremely pleased.

"So," Will began on a new subject to save David any more discomfort, "I saw you were gone when I got home from work. What've you been up to? Or was that just a two-hour Tesco run?"

"Oh, no!" David lit up with an eager energy, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to relate his story. "I did what I said I was going to do!" At Will's confused frown, David grinned even wider. "Well, first, I went to the dig at the church. Remember? Amy told us about it on Friday."

"Oh, yeah!" Will exclaimed, nodding. "That!"

"I talked to the archaeologists and they said they don't accept volunteer help. They don't like untrained amateurs handling delicate objects and messing with their systems." He shrugged. "That was disappointing. I'm actually quite knowledgeable in antiquities and could probably teach them a thing or two." He didn't notice Will's sceptical stare. "But, couldn't be helped, so I did the next best thing. I drove up to the Glasgow Science Centre!"

Will's eyes popped wide open in surprise. He wondered if this was David's first trip out of town since he moved here. "Ah! And what did they say?"

David almost bounced in his seat and looked like he was restraining himself from jumping up and dancing around the room as he spoke. "They accept volunteer work all the time! Their natural history section has a small lab where they process fossils, but the volunteer schedule there is filled. So I'll be helping with building and maintaining displays, and maybe doing some guide work." He grinned, his eyes shining and his tongue peeking out between his teeth. "Can you imagine? Filling young minds with knowledge and sparking curiosity? That's just brilliant!"

David's enthusiasm was infectious and Will couldn't help but grin. "It sounds like a perfect fit for you."

"It does! I'll be going up there once a week." He rubbed his hands together. "I can't wait."

"Isn't that a bit far, though? Maybe there's a place in Berwick or Newcastle that's closer."

"I thought about that, but you know, I haven't been back to Scotland in so many years, and I miss it." He glanced away, a distant gleam in his eyes. "I'd like to be there again, even if it's only a little bit."

Will nodded. "Oh, I can understand." He glanced out of the front window at the street. "And you'll get to enjoy that fancy car of yours."

David's gaze followed his. "I hadn't thought of that. I haven't really driven it since... Well, it's been a very long time and she really is a beauty. But," and he leaned forward, lowering his voice with a conspiratorial air, "you know what I'm looking forward to most?"

"What's that?"

"Just being around people who speak properly." Grinning impishly, he winked, and Will joined in his laughter.

"You're going to have a fantastic time there, mate."

"Lovely place, it is. I spent a large portion of the afternoon touring it." David launched into a long rambling description of the whole centre, his eyes sparkling as he painted detailed verbal illustrations of his favorite exhibits. The facility sounded fascinating, but Will was just as amazed at his friend's skill at relating the entire experience as he was at how taken he was by it. He expected that David would turn out to be an excellent guide and educator for the visitors to the centre.

True to his word, David travelled one day a week to Glasgow to work, the parking spot in front of his house empty by the time Will passed it on his way to work every Thursday morning and when he returned home in the evening. The other days of the week seemed to continue as they had always done for him: he was always home whenever Will stopped by to seek company for a film or drag him to the pub, and each time, the time it took for him to answer the door indicated that he'd been upstairs working.

For the first couple of weeks, Will mostly kept a simple schedule of sleep, work, and evenings spent playing computer games, and he found David to be a willing companion at any time he called. His friend usually invited him over for dinner two or three nights a week, and though it meant having to weather his improvised dishes, it was worth it for the company and conversation. After a while, as he became more comfortable with his workmates, however, Will found himself doing more things with them. The default activity was gaming. Both Ben and Pete, it turned out, played the same online game as he did, and it became a habit to bid his mates goodbye at work, get home, grab a quick dinner, and jump in game to raid with them.

Computer gaming camaraderie soon expanded to other pursuits, and Will found himself invited by one or the other to table-top games, the cinema, or just to hang out almost every weekend. Ben, who was born and raised in the town, took it upon himself to show Will around, taking him at least once a month to visit this historical building or explore some secret spot unknown to most tourists. He always invited David along, too, especially after discovering that Will's friend was about as enthusiastic about historical sites as he was, and David seemed to flourish when he found a second friend in Ben. Will was often required as peacekeeper when David and Ben held heated discussions about historical and political events. Both were extremely knowledgeable, with Ben defending his opinionated assumptions about politics and history against David's wealth of cold facts, and though sometimes the arguments left Ben angry and David contemptuous, they both seemed to enjoy them immensely. David still cleaved to Will as his closest mate, but he valued Ben's intellectual stimulation.

After two months of living in town, Will found that he was far more happy and fulfilled than he had been in the London rat race, working a job that was teaching him new things and provided a sense of accomplishment that had been missing in his life, and surrounded by a small group of good friends. Despite its rocky start, this adventure in pursuing a new life in a distant, unknown town had so far been successful.


	7. Chapter 7

Perched on his couch, Will smoothed his jumper down before bending over to tie the laces on his trainers. While he wasn't much of a sportsman, he always enjoyed the occasional bout of casual football and had been looking forward to it at the company's summer picnic all week. David would be coming along - he got along well with Will's coworkers and so Will had invited him - and though his friend had declined playing football, saying that he was not fond of it, Will hoped to persuade him to play; his ego demanded that someone worse than him be out on the pitch. Smirking at his own pettiness, he jumped up from the couch and headed out.

As he checked the lock on his front door, his mobile chimed in his jeans pocket, high voices singing, "Ding! Dong! The witch is dead!" Grinning as he always did at the ringtone he had chosen for texts from Terri, the company's human resources person, he dug the phone out and pulled up the new message as he walked on. It asked for directions to the picnic, and he typed his reply as he headed for David's house. The party organiser had chosen a park near Will and David's terrace which Terri had never heard of, and since Will had never quite managed to persuade her to learn to use Google Maps, he was not surprised to get this text from her. Though he was happy to help her, it didn't stop him from rolling his eyes at her virtually.

He stood and finished his text on David's doorstep, then dropped the mobile back in his pocket and let himself into his friend's house with his key.

"Hoy, David!"

Will strode into the hallway, letting the heavy blue door slam behind him. His voice cut through the silence that usually reigned in the dwelling, ringing through the empty hall. Oddly enough, there was no answer; David normally responded with a shout from upstairs within a few seconds, even if it was faint and muffled and he didn't come down for another few minutes. Will frowned and peeked out the front window to find that the space in the street in front of the house was empty; he'd been so busy texting that he hadn't noticed when he'd passed it by a moment ago. David's silver car never moved except when he was hitting the Tesco, so he must simply be late getting back. It was odd, as David was always prompt, but Will was content to wait. He walked into the lounge and sat on the couch, thumbing the remote control to turn on the telly.

As the picture on the screen resolved, he frowned for a moment, then sat up and glanced out the front again, verifying through the gauzy curtains that the space in front of the house was vacant. Whilst he had stayed in the house, it hadn't occurred to him to wonder just what it was that David did upstairs, but the current silence of the house was enticing. Leaping up from the couch, he strolled into the hallway and, stepping carefully, as if someone might hear him, he climbed the stairs to the top floor.

"David?" he called again, his voice quivering. Somehow it felt wrong to be poking around upstairs. Though David had never told him that the area was off-limits, he'd also never invited him there. He supposed that his friend might be protective of the projects he was working on, afraid that secrets might get out that others could steal, but he doubted that he'd understand a single thing he saw. The door at the top of the stairs stood slightly ajar. With a last twinge of guilt at invading his friend's privacy, Will tapped his lips with his fist and cleared his throat, then knocked on the door. It swung open, and he peered into the room that seemed to be the one that David spent most of his time in.

Like the downstairs, the room was devoid of decoration on its walls and its wooden floor was bare. A single bed, made up neatly with a deep maroon comforter and a fluffy pillow, occupied one corner. Next to it stood a nightstand with a small lamp and what looked like a couple of books lying on it. In another corner was a plain wooden wardrobe. None of this surprised Will, as the state of the house when he had first arrived had already demonstrated David's simple - well, to be honest, ascetic - tastes. It was the huge metal cylinder, standing against the wall opposite the bed, that caught Will's attention. About nine feet tall and at least three wide, it looked like it was constructed of brushed aluminum. It was featureless except for a rectangular seam with rounded corners suggesting a door, though Will could not see any hinges for it open outward.

He crossed to the cylinder and laid a hand on it. The smooth surface was strangely warm for metal standing in a cool room and almost felt like it was vibrating. Running his hand down one edge of the door, he was stunned at how perfectly flush it was with its neighbour surface. He scrabbled at it to see if it he could get a grip on it to try to pry it open, but he could barely feel the crack between the door and the wall with his fingernails. Of course, without visible hinges, it probably didn't open outward. He changed his tactic, pushing on the door, not too hard at first to avoid denting the surface. When nothing happened and the surface felt completely solid, not hollow and deformable, he pushed harder, to no avail. He stood back and stared, puzzled. Was this David's "project"? There were no tools or materials nearby, and he concluded that David's workshop must be the other room on the floor, even though he'd never seen the man enter or emerge from it.

As he turned to leave, the nightstand caught his eye and he strolled over to look at the books. The one on top looked similar to the one he saw in the kitchen on the first day he'd been here: leatherbound with an embossed pattern of circles and lines on the cover and spine. On closer look, the object underneath looked more like a tablet and Will picked up the book to see it better. It wasn't any model he recognised, and it didn't have any buttons on it that he could see, but he was reluctant to touch it and leave any fingerprints on the screen, so he instead turned his attention to the book.

Opening it randomly in the middle, he found that its pages were exactly like the cover, covered with interlocking circles and arcs with lines radiating across the paper. These were smaller, as small as print, bubbling across the paper. There were diagrams and drawings on many of the pages, with more circles and lines among them. Will couldn't tell for sure what they were, but they looked like circuits and mechanical components. As he flipped through the pages, something strange caught his eye and he riffled back until he found it. This particular page featured a large diagram of what looked like a complex mechanical system, with parts of it circled and a plethora of scribbles in pencil. A good portion of it were hand-drawn circles and lines just like the rest of the printed matter in the book, but other bits looked like writing. Many were English, such as "Ag might work" and "maybe YAG sub?" and from what he'd seen on David's shopping lists, they were in his friend's handwriting. Another phrase, Will recognised from his schooling as Germanic, though they weren't words he knew. Then there were a number of notes in different scripts that Will didn't recognise; in total, including the ones Will could identify, there were eight different scripts represented on the page.

He stared at the circles and scribbles, trying to figure out what they signified. Were they some kind of code, to protect David's work from prying eyes? If so, why write some of it in known languages? And if the circles and lines were a code, how did he get the entire book printed in it? Possibly two entire books, since Will was pretty sure this wasn't the same book as the previous one he'd seen. He couldn't even comprehend how it could be an understandable code, as there seemed to be no pattern or direction in the way the circles and lines were composed; they covered the entire surface of every page in rather mesmerising patterns. Shaking his head, he closed the book and placed it back on the tablet in the configuration he had found it.

Stepping to the wardrobe, he peeked in. This at least was normal, holding the clothing that Will had seen David wear: jackets, jumpers, a number of geeky t-shirts, jeans, trousers. The man's visual expression had always seemed limited to his clothing choices. He closed the door and decided not to rifle through the drawers at the bottom.

Perhaps David's workshop would shed some light on things. Striding out of the bedroom into the other room on the level, Will stopped short: this room was completely empty, its floor and walls bare except for the translucent curtain drawn across the window. He stood and stared around the room, his hand clapped over his mouth as his eyes took in every detail or lack thereof. After standing there for a full minute, completely puzzled, Will wandered over to the window and gazed out, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. There was barely anything upstairs that indicated that anyone lived there, much less worked there. Even if David put away all of his tools and components in the strange metal cylinder every day (and why would he, as he lived alone?), there was no evidence of any activity anywhere: no scuffing on the floor where tables or tools might have stood, no dust or debris, not even marks on the cylinder where objects being stored or taken out might have hit the edges. And anyway, he couldn't imagine that the cylinder was large enough to hold the materials and tools that he thought David would need to build anything; when Will was young, his father had dabbled in woodworking, and his tools and supplies had filled a shed. The only previous evidence of any work being done up here that Will had ever seen was one grease-stained towel, and that was nowhere to be found. He couldn't believe that David did any kind of designing or building in this house, but if he dismissed David's claim of being an inventor, then what had the man done upstairs all those days and evenings that Will stayed in the house? He glanced back toward the other room, convinced that the answers lay hidden in the metal cylinder, but he had no way of probing its secrets.

As he mused over everything he'd seen, Will spotted David's car coming down the street, and he turned to dart downstairs to the drawing room. Flopping onto the couch, he started flipping the channels to appear bored as he tucked his questions and suspicions into the back of his mind. Now more than ever, he was sure that David was hiding something and wouldn't appreciate Will's nosing into his business. He wasn't sure how, but if he wanted to learn the truth, he'd have to try to work it out of his friend without revealing that he'd been snooping upstairs. And it was something that would have to wait: if he started asking questions now, after David came home to find him alone in the house, the man would figure out what he'd done. David might have his head in the clouds, but he wasn't stupid.

Guilt and nerves made the wait drag on, and he cycled through the range of available channels three times before he heard David fumble his key into the lock and push the front door open.

"Sorry, sorry!" After a few footsteps, David appeared in the door to the lounge, toting two bags. His hair stood on end, as if he'd been constantly pulling at it. "There was a lorry blocking the road and it looked like the driver was arguing with the police. It took forever, but they finally cleared it out. Let me get these put away. So sorry!"

"Not a problem, mate. It's only a picnic. I won't be marked on my punctuality." As David hurried into the kitchen, Will punched the "off" button on the remote control and hopped up to follow his friend. Entering the room, he crossed to lean against the table, staying out of David's way.

The man was pulling all the perishables out and stacking them on the counter, leaving the dry goods in the bags. "I'm going to say right now that if you still have designs on getting me to play football, you will fail quite miserably. I spent my childhood avoiding having to play with my brother, and I've gotten quite good at it. Avoiding it, that is."

That interested Will. He'd thought that twins tended to have the same tastes. "Your brother John? He liked football and you didn't?"

"Er..." David hesitated just a tiny moment. "Yes, John. He wasn't a big fan, but he liked to play. I wanted nothing to do with it." Will wondered if David was deliberately turned away to hide the expression on his face.

"Well, I'm sure it's just as well. With your physique, you probably couldn't kick the ball three metres, and I bet it wouldn't go anywhere near the direction you wanted." Will's tone was lightly teasing.

His arms loaded with fresh food, David shook his head at his friend. "Reverse psychology won't work on me. I have no athletic ability, so mock my skills all you want, because I will agree with you." He pulled the fridge open and began to stock it.

"Hm. How about blackmail, then? What can I threaten to tell everyone if you don't play? Oh, Markus was wondering if you've gotten anything patentable yet. You know he wants in on whatever you do. I'll tell them that you've got a prototype working and that you're looking for investors. They'll be all over you."

"It won't wo-ork!" David taunted in a sing-song voice.

"No, you're right. No one would believe you've actually got something working."

"Oi!"

"Ha!"

David shot Will a sneer as he closed the fridge. "Okay. Everything is put away. I'm ready to go if you are."

"Finally! You've delayed long enough." Will hopped up from the table and jogged in place a few steps. "Let's go!"

"One-track mind, aren't you?" Rolling his eyes, David strode into the hallway and, fishing his car keys out of his pocket, dropped them on the entryway table. Turning back to his friend, he grinned. "I haven't been to a picnic in a long time. A nice relaxing afternoon with friends and sunshine? Should be a wonderful day." Will clapped him on the back then, pulling the front door open for his friend, followed him out into the bright summer sun.


	8. Chapter 8

Whilst the selection of the nearby park had been lucky for Will and David, being within a reasonable walking distance from their homes, it was also a fine choice of venue for everyone. It was a large facility, providing tennis courts and a football pitch in addition to two wide lawns bordered on all sides by shady trees, with a fenced-in area of play structures of all types for the children. As was usual for such a bright summer day, the place was bubbling with people: joggers on the paths, dog walkers, frisbee tossers on the lawns, children chasing each other back and forth.

The company had reserved an area near the football pitch, and by the time the two men arrived, the party had already started. The food was set up under a white canopy, and there was a small group chasing the black-and-white ball around the pitch.

As they approached the area, David remarked, "The football's already started. You're missing out."

Will rubbed his hands in eager anticipation. "Not for long. Come on!"

His friend shook his head. "You go on. Enjoy yourself."

He jabbed a finger toward David's shoes. "Don't let those trainers go to waste. Put them to good use."

"I always wear trainers. I use them just fine."

"Bloody hell, mate! You're a hard nut." Will grinned and trotted off toward the pitch, David following at a leisurely pace.

There weren't enough people to make two teams, but the players made do with what they had, and they ran a bit loose with the rules. Will found himself out of breath rather quickly, which was no surprise since his preferred form of entertainment consisted of long periods of sitting still with his only motions that of his fingers on mouse and keyboard, but the activity was exhilarating and he vowed to work on his conditioning to be in better shape for the next year. As more people arrived at the party, more players joined the pitch, filling out two teams and more. Though they weren't turning anyone away, Will decided that a half-hour of running and kicking (and usually missing) was enough for now and used the excuse that the teams were too large to search for refreshment.

After fetching a cup of water and drinking it down twice, he joined David, who he found had acquainted himself with Liz, one of the marketers. The two of them were sitting on a bench, watching over Liz's two daughters and a number of the other children at the play structures, whilst Liz knitted.

"Hoy, Will." David seemed pretty relaxed. "Game over already?"

"Nah." He poked a thumb over his shoulder toward the pitch. "Plenty enough for now. Don't want to overdo it."

"You look a bit peaky. Come sit a spell." Liz patted the bench next to her.

"Thanks." Not wanting to admit how winded he actually was, he sat down carefully next to her.

"David's been keeping me company while I watch the kiddies. Everyone else has run off." She jerked her head toward the canopy as her hands continued to work her needles. "Though I don't mind. That one there's Tom's son, and those two are Patrick's, and they're all sweethearts. I barely need to keep an eye on them."

"Tom's son," David murmured, as if trying to commit the boy to memory. "Josh, right? I like him. He said I look like Spider-Man." Setting fists on his hips, he puffed out his chest with pride.

Both Will and Liz laughed. "I don't know, mate. Peter Parker is kind of a scrawny git."

David continued to show off his silhouette, nose in the air. "I am not 'scrawny'. I am 'trim'. 'Svelte'. 'Wiry', perhaps." He impressed them both with his ability to keep a straight, supercilious face.

"Oh?" Will matched his condescending tone. "Care to prove that on the pitch?"

"Absolutely not. I am far too busy striking poses to awe the masses." He lost it at that point, dissolving into laughter, and the other two joined him.

Finally regaining composure, Will wiped a tear from his eye and sniffed. "Well, for all that I've ragged on you, mate, I've got to say, football may be too much for me. I could barely keep up with all those young ones out there."

"'Young ones'?" coughed Liz. "You can't be more than twenty-five!"

"Twenty-seven, actually."

"Hmph." She pointed at him with her knitting needles. "You have no right to complain about your age. You're not the youngest employee, but a lot of us are far older than you."

"Yeah. I just need to get in shape." An idea came to him and he turned to David. "We should go running together, mate."

David stared at him. "What? Now?"

"Are you mental? I mean, set up a time to run every couple of days. What do you say?"

His friend grimaced in distaste. "I don't see the point."

"Health and fitness are the usual ones."

"'Svelte'. 'Wiry'." Waving his hands up and down his torso, he indicated his physique. "Do I need to demonstrate again?"

Will snorted. "We can all use more exercise, mate."

David wasn't convinced. "I'll think about it. In the meantime, I'm famished. Shall we round up the kiddies for lunch?"

As Liz agreed eagerly and began packing away her knitting, Will shrugged. David was never hungry and so he knew he was using lunch as an excuse to drop the conversation. He resolved to bring up the idea later, and couch it in terms of having one more thing to do with his friend. That was the way to get David to agree.

The three adults corralled the children, delivering the extras to the correct parents, and after fetching their food, David and Will sat down to eat with the group David had first met at Marco's. They ate and chatted for over an hour, until Will's yen for football overcame him again, and he persuaded all the men except David to join him out on the pitch; Amy didn't like the sport and Mary, who had spent the time before lunch mixing it with the blokes, decided she'd had enough for the day. The three were happy to find a grassy spot on the sidelines to watch the fun and chat.

With rest and renewed energy from food, Will gained his second wind, playing a lot better than he had the first time, even managing to execute a rather flawless drive (well, flawless for him, anyway) and scoring a point for his team. As he jogged back down the pitch, Michael came up alongside him.

"Hey, Will, you looking for a team? We could use you."

Surprised by the offer, Will grinned. "Me? What kind of team?"

"Pub league. Bottom of, mind you, but you gotta start somewhere." Michael shrugged in embarrassment. "We're... enthusiastic?"

"My kind of team!" Will pounded Michael on the shoulder as they ran. "When do you practise, and when are the games? I'm mostly open but there's a couple of -"

An enormous _BOOM_ overhead stunned the two men, sending them sprawling on the grass. Clapping his hands to his deafened ears, Will rolled onto his back and nearly choked as his stomach convulsed in awe. A gigantic grey metallic disc with four blue blossoms of light in a square on its surface hovered high above him. He rubbed at his ears to try to clear them, and in a moment, behind the screams and shouts coming from all directions, he could hear a distant but steady roar of powerful engines. _Aliens! Real aliens!_ Jumping to his feet, he kept an eye on the disc and concluded that it was descending. It was slow, but it was coming down, right on top of him.

Most of the people in the park were running, terrified. The footballers were already scattering, and Liz and her husband had scooped up their two children and were fleeing for their lives. A couple of foolhardy folk had their phones out, recording the descent of the flying saucer, while a few others stood stunned. Will saw David, standing ten metres away on the forgotten sideline, gaping at the disc in disbelief. "You are kidding me!" he finally coughed out. "This... this is _not_ my fault!" His incredulity suddenly transformed to stoic calm, and he spun slowly in place, surveying the area. "Get them away. Far away." Spotting his friend, he sprinted to him, waving to secure his attention.

"Will. Tell people to get out, to run as far as they can. Don't stop running."

"They are! Can't you see?"

"No. They're going to think they're safe when they reach the houses. Tell them don't stop until they're at least two blocks out. That ship is too big. The thrusters will burn up the trees and maybe the houses on the edge. Everyone's got to keep running. Go. Go!" Without stopping to verify that Will understood, he dashed off to the nearest stunned person, grabbing her hand to coax her into fleeing.

While he might not know what David was talking about, Will knew people needed to flee and followed his friend's example. The closest person was a phone jockey. "Hey, mate, you've got to run! That thing's coming down right on top of us!" he yelled as he ran up to him.

The man dismissed his warnings. "We've got time. This is going to be the greatest! Alien ship right here in town!" Will grabbed the man's arm that was holding the phone to pull him into running. "Hey, shove off! I'm making my fortune here!"

"You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you? What's the point of the video if you're dead?" Will snatched the phone out of the man's hand and, throwing it into the dirt, ground his heel into the touchscreen.

"Oi! That's my mobile!"

"Oh, just shift!" He wasn't going to waste any more time on that daft bloke and dashed off in search of the next person that needed motivation to save themselves. By this point, most people were either gone or fleeing, but many had stopped at the edge of the park, peering around the corners of the terraces to watch the disc descend. There was no way he and David would be able to warn everyone off, but they could reach at least some of them. He sprinted off toward the nearest street.

As he approached the first group of gawkers, their awed expressions made him glance up at the descending disc, and for the second time in the last few minutes, he stumbled over his own feet, this time catching himself before he hit the pavement. The craft was not a flying saucer, but a tall cylinder, panelled on its sides and capped on its ends. From his oblique angle, he couldn't tell how big the craft actually was, but it was certainly multiple times taller than any building in town. A woman's sobbing, "Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod," jolted him back to his task.

"Keep running, everyone!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "You've got to run. The ship will smash this far out. Keep going into town!" Sweeping his arms in the direction he wanted them to go, he ran up to anyone who wasn't moving and pushed them to get them started. Those who resisted, he left; he didn't have time to argue.

As he ran, Will noticed that the windows in the nearby houses had been blown out by the sonic boom, their curtains flapping in the chaotic wind raised by the currents of the spaceship's blasters, and he wondered just how far out the damage had spread. It also brought to mind the last time he'd seen sonic shattering of windows, all across London at Christmastime, going on four years before, when the Sycorax ship, a monstrosity that looked like it was carved from an island, had attempted to control the world. Will hadn't been a walker and so had gotten a good look at that alien craft, hanging in the sky, cold and silent. It hadn't descended to earth, rumbling and threatening to scorch the town, like the one above his head. This one was a direct threat to his life, and yet he wasn't fleeing in panic. How exactly did that work?

After two long blocks of clearing people out, Will stopped to catch his breath, panting heavily as he leaned against a low wall. He suspected that if he hadn't just been chasing a ball up and down the pitch, he wouldn't be so out of breath. However, glancing around as he rested, he saw that others had taken up his torch, passing on his message and spurring more people to flee further, and he smiled. Perhaps he could get himself out of the danger zone now. He started walking in the direction he'd been sending everyone else, his hand on his chest as it heaved.

Half a block later, his phone chirped. Stopping and fishing it out of his pocket, he thumbed the button and held it up to his ear as he panted. "Will?" It was David, his tone calm and conversational.

"Yeah. People are getting out."

"Good, good. Where are you?"

He spun to spot the street signs. "Bailey and... Bennett."

"Okay. I'll be right there."

"But -" _Click_.

Will didn't want to stay in the danger zone, but David obviously expected him to be there. He glanced up at the ship, noting that the roar of the engines was louder but not yet deafening, and, deciding he still had a few minutes to escape being roasted, sat down on a curb to wait. There was nothing to do but watch the craft descend. Impossibly steady for such a large, unwieldy object, it floated down slowly, its progress almost unnoticeable from this angle, except that it seemed to grow ever larger. With a sudden mechanical _clunk_ that reverberated over the town, three panels, equidistant around the bottom of the craft, opened and extended, transforming into claw-like landing legs.

"Will!"

Will barely heard David's voice over the roar of the engines, and he looked up to see the man approaching from the park: he'd actually run across the landing zone to get to him. His heart clenched, and he leapt up and prepared to sprint off, beckoning his friend to move faster.

"David!" he called back. "Come on! Let's go."

"Oh, no, no. We're safe here." David jogged up. "The ship is actually smaller than the park. I said two blocks just to get people further out. It's better that way." He spun and looked around. "We can see what's going on from here. But over there, behind the wall, so they don't see us." He trotted off to his indicated spot, and Will followed him in confusion.

"Just in time," David murmured as they concealed themselves behind a wall in the first terrace by the park, giving them a good view of the spacecraft. At first, Will had no idea what he was talking about, but then he realised that the immense size of the ship distorted his perception of its speed: it was much nearer to touching down than he had estimated. The thrusters, which had at first appeared shaped like stunted eggs, were now obviously long blue torches. As their tips approached the surface of the park, the radiating heat burned off the vegetation, a circle of flame expanding outward, reducing the green lawn and the bushes and trees in its path to grey ash in an instant. Will shuddered to think that the blasts of warm wind in his face, smelling of smoke and some kind of alien fuel, might soon turn into a melting furnace.

His hand over his mouth, David mumbled to himself as they watched. "What are they doing here? Why do they think they have the right? Oh, this is a bloody nightmare!" Will tried to pay attention to what he was saying, but he was mesmerised by his front-row view of an alien landing. The thrusters were now blasting lorry-sized divots in the ground, ruining the football pitch Will and his friends had been playing on only minutes earlier. David was right: the ship's circumference was smaller than the park, though only just, and the ring of fire had reached the windbreak in places, individual trees now giant torches. As Will blocked the increasing heat on his face with an arm, the ship's landing claws hit the ground and its full weight settled, the ground trembling and the body of the craft groaning mechanically as it adjusted to its landing position. Dust sprinkled over the watchers as the house above them shook. The thrusters cut out with a final puff of air, strong as a gale, which nearly knocked the two men over and snuffed out the flaming trees, though they continued to smoulder.

An eerie silence fell over the park, broken only by the creaking of the ship's structure. Will gazed up at the silver cylinder, towering immobile over the surrounding town, and imagined gun ports opening in the sides, blasting everything to dust. Grabbing David's arm, he tugged hard. "Let's get out of here before the aliens come out. It's not safe." He was proud that he managed to keep his voice from squeaking.

Watching the spaceship intently, David didn't even turn. "Nah. They're Judoon. They don't do anything without filling out permission forms in triplicate. They'll be out in - ah! There!"

With a sound like the opening of a giant deep freezer door, a panel in the bottom of the ship detached, lowering to form a ramp to the ground. As soon as it stabilised, bulky soldiers in skirted matte black armor tramped down in perfectly-aligned dual columns. Will blinked and stared as he realised that they appeared to be humanoid rhinoceros.

"Space rhinos?" This time his voice cracked on the words.

"Yup. Space rhino police, to be exact. But why are they here? They don't have jurisdiction on Earth." David scrubbed a hand down over his jaw as the rhinos, still spilling from the ship, marched to form four perfectly ordered platoons, a rectangle of rectangles. One soldier stood in front of the array.

Will's hand tightened on David's arm. "What are you talking about? You know what those things are?"

His friend ignored his questions, his attention on the lone rhino. "Come on, come on," he murmured. "What do you want?"

At that moment, the opening bars to the Indiana Jones theme filled the air, and Will clapped his hand to his pocket to muffle it. "That's Ben," Will whispered as he pulled out his phone and put it on silent. "He probably wants to know if we made it out."

"Call him back later," David hissed, holding a finger to his lips without taking his eyes off the aliens. Exasperated, Will declined the call and stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

As soon as the fourth platoon assembled, the lead rhino turned to face away from his army. "Mo! Go! Fo! To! Ro! Sho!" His deep guttural voice boomed across the empty park. "O bo flo!"

Pulling at his hair, David groaned in frustration. "Oh, you're so thick! There's no one there, and they wouldn't understand you anyway." He slapped his hand to his forehead as the leader continued to shout his nonsense syllables to the air.

Abruptly, the leader did an about face and started shouting toward his troops. David nodded. "Now we're getting somewhere."

Will's jaw dropped. "You understand them?" Incredulous, his voice was an octave higher than normal.

David shushed his friend with an impatient wave of his hand. "That first stuff was just a standard announcement of arrival and a request for a representative. Now these are troop orders, which will be more informative." He held a finger up to keep Will quiet. "Bring back a human for interrogation, of course, yeah. And then search the town and… 'Find it'? 'It'? What's 'it'?" At one last booming command from the leader, the platoons turned to march off in perfect lines streaming out of the park. "Oh, don't leave me hanging!" He punched the air in frustration, then beckoned "Come on!" to Will before striding off behind the house.

Will trotted to keep up with his friend, who was muttering wildly to himself. "What is 'it'? Is that all I have to work with? How am I supposed to do anything with that? Doctor, where _are_ you?" He halted suddenly, such that Will almost crashed into him, and grabbed at the clasp of his necklace, undoing it and holding the chain in his hand, the medallion dangling as he gazed up into the sky.

Inhaling to protest, Will grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. "Come on, mate. We've got to run. They'll be here any minute."

"No, no, no. You don't understand." He flung an arm towards the park. "Those rhinos, they're police, and they're looking for something. If they don't find it, they'll assume that the humans are hiding it from them. That's obstruction of justice at best, or they might judge the Earth as guilty of possessing illegal property, or kidnapping if 'it' is a person. Either way, the sentence is execution."

Setting his fists on his hips, Will frowned in mocking disbelief. "Of who?"

"Of the town. Perhaps the country if they can make it stick." He gazed around at the houses, thinking. "Thing is, this is a level five planet. Why do they think they have the jurisdiction? We've got to find out what 'it' is."

"Level five planet?" Will was on the edge of hysteria. "What in the bloody hell are you talking about?" The tramp of heavy boots approaching caught their attention. Will hissed at his friend, "Let's go!" but David shook his head.

"There's got to be something we can do. We'll think of something, won't we, Will? Until then, we'd best stay out of their way." He glanced around them, then nodded. "Back to the house. Best place for us to hide. Come on." Stringing the necklace back around his neck, he broke into a run. Will glanced back in the direction from which the rhinos would be approaching, then toward his friend's retreating figure. Throwing his hands up in frustration, he groaned and ran after him.


	9. Chapter 9

As soon as he made it in the door, David began pacing around the drawing room, lost in thought, raking a hand through his increasingly messy hair and mumbling to himself. "We can't do this alone. How am I going to get his attention? The right him?" The slam of the front door startled him back to the present and he whirled to face Will, who was glaring at him with his arms crossed. "What?"

Will threw his hands up. "'What?' You have the nerve to ask what?" Fists clenched at his side, Will was barely holding himself back from decking his friend. "You are going to come clean with me right now!" He jabbed a finger down at the floor.

"Now? There are aliens out there! We've got to do something. There's no time!"

Will strode forward and poked David in the chest, sending him stumbling backward a step. "We've been friends these few months now, but you've never told me anything about yourself, nothing real. You've always been a bit weird, but hey, I thought, you're my mate, that's fine. Now you're dragging me _toward_ an alien invasion like we're going to stop it by standing in front of them and singing showtunes. That's it. I'm done. I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's going on. Who the bloody hell are you?"

David gaped at him, his jaw trembling. "I… I'm not… I can't -"

Will stabbed him with his finger again, hard. "Yes, you can, and you will! What are you, UNIT? MI6? I don't care if I don't have security clearance or whatever. Tell me what's going on."

David spun away and paced across the room, scrubbing down his jaw with his hand. When he turned back, his eyes were wide with fear. "You're not going to believe me."

"There's an enormous spaceship standing in the park down the road, packed with a platoon of space rhinos. What exactly am I not going to believe?"

David sighed. "That… that I'm one of them." His hands flew up to negate the incorrect implication. "An alien. Not a rhino. I'm not a Judoon. But I'm not human, either."

Will blinked at him, a slight frown wrinkling his brow. After a few seconds, he scowled. "No. Look, okay, I understand if you can't tell me, if whoever you're working for is going to kill you for it. Or kill me. I get it. Just, have a little respect, okay? I may be just a regular citizen, without all this knowledge of aliens and things, but don't expect me to believe something that stupid."

"Will, I'm telling the truth. I'm an alien." When Will threw his hands up and whirled away in frustration, David trotted up to follow him as he strode out into the hallway. "I am. That's why I know about the Judoon. And that's why I'm so weird. You said it yourself. All the strange things you've seen. I don't sleep or eat much. I say odd things, and I know you've seen my books covered with circles and lines. And you've been upstairs, haven't you? I'm sure you must have done, and it's all empty except the bed and the big metal thing. All these things you can't explain."

Will knew he had to get out and stomped off toward the front door, trying to shut David out. "No. Just shut up. Shut up and leave me alone."

David grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. "Will, look at me. Look at me, just for ten seconds."

Glowering, Will stared at his friend, then clapped his hand to his mouth and staggered back as his eyes grew wide. At first, he had thought it was a trick of the sunlight streaming in through the windows, but a faint golden glow sparkled in David's eyes and grew brighter and brighter, until he could no longer see his brown irises through the blazing light. Wisps of glimmering energy curled away and dispersed into the air. Stumbling back a step and colliding with the door behind him, Will flattened himself against it. "What is that? Stay away from me!"

Abruptly, the glow vanished, the last bit of energy drifting away from David's eyes like smoke, and he appeared completely normal. He began to reach for his friend but Will cowered at his approach, and he held himself back; his mere presence was now a threat. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was the easiest way. I'm still just me. I'm your friend, and I'm not going to hurt you. Not ever." Holding his hands up, he backed away. "See? It's okay. If you want me to leave, I will."

Collecting himself, Will stood back up straight, though keeping a wary eye on David. "No, I'm okay. You don't have to leave." He inhaled deeply. "You're an alien. Apparently aliens are Scottish." He snorted. "Actually, that explains quite a bit about Scotland."

David smirked. "No, just this alien is Scottish. I can't speak to any other."

"So..." Will had no idea what to say. "What exactly are you? What do you actually look like?"

Opening his arms wide, David displayed himself to his friend. "This is what I actually look like. I'm no different from what you've always known."

"But you're not human." He could barely believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

"No. Well, not really." Hesitating for a moment, he screwed his face up with apprehension. "I'm sort of, well, the race I'm closest to was called the Time Lords."

Will frowned in disbelief. "Time Lords? That's a rubbish name. You made that up. What kind of people would call themselves that?"

David shrugged, shaking his head. "Pretentious ones. But that is really what they called themselves."

"But you don't."

"Because I'm not really one of them."

Gritting his teeth, Will hooked his thumbs on his shorts pockets. "You're not making this any easier, David."

The alien sighed. "I'm trying to tell you the truth, only... it's so very complicated." Crossing his arms, he grasped his forehead and closed his eyes, searching for some inner strength. After a moment, his eyes popped open and he nodded. "Okay. I'm going to try to explain everything. It's very complicated, so I'm going to say now that it's a bit of an simplification, and I promise I'll explain everything fully later, every detail if you want to know, but this right now is close enough. I'll answer all your questions, but later. Okay?"

Will searched David's face, trying to assess his honesty, but it occurred to him that he had no way to judge an alien's morality or emotional state. It sickened him to realise that he wasn't sure he could trust this man he had thought was his best mate. Finally nodding, he drawled, "Okay."

David took a deep breath before starting to speak. "You remember I told you about my brother, the one who's gone now." He continued when Will nodded. "His name is not John. He's called the Doctor. Yes, yes, that's weird, I know, but that's the name he took. He's a Time Lord, from a planet called Gallifrey, which was destroyed. He's the last true Time Lord, and he's not really my brother. He..." He paused a moment, breathing deeply. "He created me, a sort of a clone of him, but human. I grew up human, in a human family, in Scotland, so no, Scots aren't aliens normally. A couple of years ago, I met up with him and learned who I was, and as a result of some very strange circumstances, I was transformed into a Time Lord, but only partly. That's what I meant when I said I was in an accident: it changed me, changed who I am, how I think. Thing is, it didn't work right." He tapped his cheek. "The shining eyes thing, that's actually a symptom of my body being broken by the change. I... I'm really neither Time Lord nor human, though I'm more Time Lord than anything else." His shoulders slumped with a tired sigh. "That's who I am, in a nutshell."

Will's mouth had slowly dropped open as he listened, and once David had finished, he thought on what he had heard for a while, his mouth working soundlessly. Finally, he grunted out, "So you're a copy of another alien that looks human." It was about all he could comprehend from everything he'd just heard.

David stood with his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly bowed, peering up at Will as if he were waiting for a verdict. "Yes."

He stared at David for a moment, his hand over his mouth. "And you were human, but you're not now."

"Yes."

"And..." Will's brow creased in sudden suspicion. "You're living here why? Infiltrating the planet and assessing our weaknesses? Abducting people and probing them? Is that why this house was empty when I first got here?"

Taken by surprise, David stepped back defensively. "No! I'm not here to do anything like that! Aliens aren't automatically hostile and evil. There are plenty of species out there who are perfectly friendly and harmless."

"Then why?" Will spun, his hands indicating the whole house. "Why live here like a mad hermit? What are you up to?"

David's answer was matter-of-fact. "I needed somewhere to build my spaceship."

"Your _what_?"

"My spaceship. I need time to build it, a couple more years, but I thought, I need to live somewhere in the meantime, why not Earth? It's where I'm most comfortable. No one would notice me, right?" He laughed feebly at the absurdity of his assumption.

Crossing his arms, Will leaned back on one leg and shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. If you don't have a spaceship, how did you get here to build it?"

"I was with the Doctor. He let me choose where to go and I chose Earth." David's voice became tiny. "It's my only home, really."

"And when exactly were you going to tell me this?"

"I wasn't." At Will's angry glare, David shrugged. "There was no need to. I look human, don't I? I act human except for a few oddities. I'm not dangerous. Am I a threat to you in any way?"

Will gaped at him, then stabbed a hand toward the window. "You just dragged me into an alien invasion! Yes, you are a threat to me." Stunned, David's face fell and he stumbled back, staring at his friend in horror, and Will decided to press his advantage. "I don't know anything about you, what you're capable of, but you expected me to follow you in there blindly. You still do, don't you? You're going to go up against that army, and you expect me to go with you!"

"No! Well, yes, but not like that, not like we're going to fight them. I told you what they're going to do. If they don't find whatever it is they're looking for, they're going to find the town guilty of obstruction of justice and execute everyone. I can't just let that happen." His shoulders sagged. "But you're right. I assumed that you'd come with me. I just thought…" Abruptly, David whirled away and strode off into the hallway, and after a brief hesitation, Will dashed after him.

"David…"

The alien stopped and spun back. His Adam's apple bobbed as he composed himself. "I never intended this. I didn't think there'd be any harm in living here for a while. To everyone else, I'd just be this bloke living in this house, and I'd get to pretend for a while that nothing had changed and I was still normal. But you're right. That was stupid. I'm not normal. I never will be." Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes with resigned acceptance. "Of course I'm a threat. I can't not be."

"That's not what I meant…"

"But it's true." He stepped forward and grasped his friend's shoulder. "Will, you have to run. They haven't seen you yet, but if they do, they'll consider you part of the town and if they condemn it, they'll hunt you down. Pack an extra set of clothing, and wear something over your face. When you get out of the town, change into the other clothes so they won't recognise you by what you're wearing. They're really not very smart."

"David, I -"

David cut him off, his voice firm, though quiet and gentle. "You don't have much time. You've got to go now." He clapped the human on the arm. "Thank you for being my friend, these past few months. I'm sorry for deceiving you all this time." His soft, regretful smile lit his face, and he glanced toward the door. "Go on. Get yourself safe." Turning, he trotted upstairs and disappeared into the bedroom at the top of the landing.

At a loss of what to do, Will watched him retreat. There were still space rhinos marching around outside and the thought of them made Will want to flee on the spot, and yet, for all that he was at the centre of an alien invasion, the situation in this house was far more important. In urging Will to flee and save himself, David had appeared noble and strong, but it was painfully obvious to Will that the realisation that he'd endangered his friend without thinking and was completely alienated from the planet he wanted to call home had nearly broken him. David had always been a good friend, caring for Will when he was sick, providing him a home when he didn't have one, and just being there, but… Will groaned in frustration. _I trusted him._ That was the crux of it. David hadn't trusted Will, keeping who he was a secret. And then he had betrayed Will's trust, dragging him into a life-threatening situation, without concern for his safety and again, holding back vital information. Clenching his fists, Will spun on his heel and stomped off toward the door.

The puff of air in his face as he yanked the door open gave him pause. He was going outside again, back into the thick of the invasion. Down the street, a rhino bulled open a door and disappeared into the house; Will hoped the family had fled and the place was empty. He turned back and gazed at the stairs, up which his friend had disappeared. David was going to do something about them. Will had no idea what, but he knew that he was going to try and that the man had the right of it, that something had to be done. He shook his head: no matter how betrayed he felt, he couldn't let him do it alone. Groaning, he bounded up the stairs and into David's room.

It appeared as it had earlier that day - that year ago when he'd explored the room whilst David had been out shopping, or so it felt - with the bed, made up meticulously, the wardrobe, and the odd metal cylinder standing in the corner. The alien was nowhere to be seen. Will stepped over to the window, but it was latched and undisturbed, so he couldn't have left in that manner. Turning back to the room, he noticed that the door on the cylinder was slightly ajar, a dim light spilling out from the crack between the edge and the jamb. He could have sworn it had been shut a moment ago. _He's in there? What is he, a vampire?_ Frowning in confusion, he walked over to it and pushed it open.

Beyond the doorway, the cylinder opened into a circular chamber much larger than the room Will was standing in. His first reflex was to pull his head out and check that the cylinder really was only a metre wide, and it was. He then stuck his head back in, even though the sight was causing his stomach to churn. The vaulted chamber was over fifteen metres in diameter, its walls, uniformly honeycombed with shallow round depressions, and floor made of some unknown pure white substance. In the centre was a hexagonal table-like structure, made of the same material, featureless except that cabinet doors and floor paneling beneath it stood open, revealing mechanics and electrical circuitry. It was surrounded by piles of mechanical components, bundles of wires, workbenches covered with tools and materials, and other unrecognisable objects, and above it, from its centre, a clear glass cylinder rose to the high ceiling. David stood hunched over the edge of the central table, his fists supporting him and his head hanging.

Will must have made a sound, probably a strangled gasp at the sight of the inside of the cylinder, for David looked up wearily. Spying the intruder, he threw his hands up in exasperation and stared at the ceiling. "Oh! You won't talk to _me_ , but you'll let _him_ in." Will spotted David's necklace grasped tightly in his fist, the medallion dangling from the brass chain.

Opening his mouth to speak, Will coughed, his first words getting strangled in his throat, and swallowing, he tried again. " _This_ is your spaceship?"

"Someday she will be. Maybe. Maybe she'll…" His tone was laced with a despondent undercurrent. His shoulders sagged for a moment, then he stood up straight and cleared his throat. "Welcome to the TARDIS. It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Yes, that means she's a time machine."

Dumbfounded, Will stood stunned, gazing about the chamber. "It's incredible."

"She is that." Stroking the table with reluctant but clear affection, he gazed up at the glass cylinder and sighed. He turned back to Will. "You need to go. You need to get out while there's still time."

"I'm not going." He plowed ahead as David frowned at him in surprise, one eyebrow arched. "I'm not letting you face those things alone."

David shook his head fervently. "I can't ask you to do that."

"You're not." He held his head high. "It's my decision. I'm going to help you however I can."

David's eyes grew wide. "You will?"

"Yeah." Striding into the spaceship, he planted himself squarely in front of the man who'd taken him in and helped him start out his new life in this town. "I don't know who you are, and frankly, at any other time, I'd be done with you. But," he blurted to stop David from interrupting, flinging his arm toward the door, "whatever's going on out there is bigger than the both of us, and you're probably the only person who can stop it. This can wait." He held up his hand as David drew in breath to speak. "Just move on, okay? Let's get past this." He exhaled and looked David in the eye. "So what are we doing?"

David met Will's gaze with all of his worry, guilt, and disappointment plain on his face. Then, with a brief flash of gold in his wide brown eyes, his expression snapped to cold and serious. He spun away, clapping his hand to mouth. "I... I don't know. I'm not equipped for this. If I could contact the Doctor, he'd take care of it straight away -"

Frowning, Will tried to make sense of what David was saying. "The Doctor? But you said he was dead."

"No, no, not like that. The Doctor is still alive." Running his hands through his hair, David tried to pace but was blocked by the mess around his feet. He turned around and leaned back against the table. "Time Lords… they don't die like we do. When they die, they change into another person. They remember their past lives, but they become someone new, with a whole new life and new body." At Will's confused boggle, he laughed. "Yes. Unbelievable, but true. The Doctor that I came from, the one I consider my brother, he's dead, but the new Doctor still lives, as far as I know."

Will wagged a finger at David as he tried to make sense of what he'd just heard. "So... so when you die, you're going to change into someone else and continue to live?"

"No, no, not I. That's another thing that's broken in me. That won't work for me. I'll die just like everyone else, thank god." He glanced up at the ceiling with a relieved smile. Looking back at Will, he saw his friend's disbelief. "No, I don't want to live longer than my normal span, which is going to be far longer than I want. And I've already gone through a transformation into another person." Trembling slightly, he hugged himself, gazing off at the wall. "I never want to do that again." He fell silent, but after a few contemplative seconds, he inhaled deeply and turned back to his friend. "That's all irrelevant right now. We've other things to think about."

Will bit his lip. Those short statements revealed to him that David was dealing with difficulties far beyond his comprehension. However, there was no time to consider that now, so he nodded and schooled himself back into a businesslike frame of mind. "All right. So, if the Doctor were here, he could do something about those things?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Yes, he does this kind of thing all the time."

Will frowned. "But you can't call him."

"No." David's next statement was quiet. "I can't ever."

Will could tell this wasn't a technical problem. "Why? What's wrong with you calling him?"

David bit his lip and paused before attempting to explain. "The Doctor, he's a time traveller. Always has been. And he loves Earth, comes here all the time, been doing so for centuries." He sighed. "The problem is me. If I try to contact the Doctor, any of his previous selves might answer, and that would be bad. I didn't exist until his last self created me, and if any of his previous selves meet me, including the one that created me _before_ he did it, they would know about me before they knew about me. That's a dangerous paradox, and I can't allow that to happen."

Will just stared at him. Why he thought any of this might be simple escaped him at the moment.

"Yeah." David barked a mirthless laugh. "Like I said, everything about me is proper complicated. But the bottom line is, I have to make sure the Doctors never find me."

Will set his fists on his hips. "Then we have to take care of this ourselves."

"Looks like." Crossing his arms, David settled himself in a defiant, determined stance, his feet set wide apart.

Will nodded. "So what do we do?"

David stroked his chin, his eyes wandering sightlessly as he worked through ideas in his mind. "I think the only thing we can do is find out what they're looking for and find it for them."

"And how do we do that?"

The alien walked over to the table and placed a hand flat on the surface as he thought. Tapping twice, he spun around and leaned back against it. "The only way I can think of. By asking them."

Will couldn't believe it. "Just walk up and ask them?"

"Yes."

"And you don't think they'll gun you down on the spot?" Will couldn't quite keep his voice from squeaking.

"Oh, that's not a problem." David pushed himself off the table and picked up what looked like a mechanical component from one of the nearby piles, toying with it as he talked. "Judoon follow the law. Every reaction they have is determined by some law. If you break a law, sure, they'll condemn you and mete out punishment. But if you are innocent of any wrongdoing, they'll deal with you fairly. As far as I know, there is no law against you asking them a question."

Will was starting to understand how David crafted his words to leave out important bits of information while seeming to reveal everything he knew. "But there's a law against _you_ asking them a question, isn't there?"

David smirked, impressed that his friend had read between his lines. "There might be. I'm an alien. They'll know that right off. And if it's an alien they're looking for, they might decide I'm what they're here for and execute me on the spot. You should be ready for that. It might be left to you to deal with them." He dropped the component back on its pile.

"Don't talk like that, mate."

"It's the simple truth, Will." He didn't seem concerned about that possible outcome at all. "So, that's what we'll do. Walk up to them and ask them what they want and how we can help them find it. A fine a plan as any. Just give me a moment. I've got to get this back on." David nodded at the necklace in his hand.

Will stared at the medallion. Up close, he could see it seemed to be made of brass and etched with the same motif of interlocking circles and lines that he'd seen in David's books. "Why? What is it?"

"This," he said, holding the pendant up at eye level, "is a neural inhibitor. You see, Time Lords are psychic and they can sense the presence of one another. Which means, of course, that the Doctor could sense me if he arrived here on Earth in this time zone. Since I can't let him do that, I have to wear this to shut down my psychic abilities, so that the Doctor can't hear me." He gestured around the chamber. "I can take it off in here, because, well, because telepathy doesn't cross the dimensional barrier between here and out there." He undid the clasp on the chain. "Welp, on again." With a pained grimace, he looped the chain about his neck and secured it, then dropped the pendant under his shirt.

"Does it hurt?"

David pursed his lips in distaste. "Not as such, no. I think it's much like becoming deaf when you're used to being able to hear. It's not like I can normally hear everyone's thoughts or anything - that's not how my telepathy works - but when it's on, the background noise I never notice is gone and everything is completely silent. And there's this pressure on my mind." He pressed a hand to the side of his head and screwed his eyes closed for a few seconds. "It's... uncomfortable. I can't explain."

The idea of David being in constant discomfort due to having to hide from the other Time Lord dropped a rock into the pit of Will's stomach. "Oh. That's why you don't use the house. You'd rather be in here, with that off."

"Yeah. There's nothing in here but floors and walls, not until the TARDIS matures, but just not having this on is everything. It's still silent in here, though." He glanced up at the glass cylinder above the table with a discouraged frown, then took a deep breath. "Come on. We've got to do this." Hopping over the piles of components, he trotted toward the door, Will following close behind.


	10. Chapter 10

Will and David threaded their way through the streets, avoiding the soldiers when they could. They soon found, though, that when they were spotted, the rhinos paid them no heed; David reasoned that they might have already found humans to talk to, obviating the first order they were given, and if the thing they were looking for was an object and not a creature, they'd have no reason to inspect the humans, or humanoids, passing by.

Will frowned as they slipped away. "That doesn't make sense. They might get information on finding the thing if they asked someone."

David nodded, smirking. "I told you, they're pretty thick. If they're told to find something, that's all they care about. It makes it hard, though. If we tell them something important and they don't see an immediate connection with their objective, they'll ignore it."

He continued filling Will in on the Judoon. "They're hirelings of the Shadow Proclamation, which pretty much functions as mum for the universe, making sure everyone plays nice. They try to make sure one planet isn't taking advantage of another. I'm a bit dodgy on how it all works. I mean, they were included in my studies, but there wasn't a big emphasis on them. To be honest, I think the Time Lords considered themselves above all that."

"So you're saying that the universe's United Nations sent these rhinos here for some reason."

"Right. The Judoon are just police. They're a bit of a bully, none too nice, and not very clever. And very ready to dispense justice when a law's been broken. Best not to say too much in front of them."

As they approached the park, they could see that David had been right: amidst a handful of Judoon guarding the spaceship, the apparent leader - not that Will could tell one from another - was booming commands at three cowering humans, a woman and two men, being held by two Judoon with their rifles trained on them. They were too far away to make out exactly what he was saying, but Will could tell that the rhino was using intelligible words.

"He's speaking English! How is he speaking English?"

"They have a language assimilator. Take a sample of language, plug it in, instant comprehension. They just needed someone to provide a sample." David jogged to a stop and Will came up beside him. "When we approach, they're going to point a cylindrical object at you, but don't worry about it: they're just identifying your species. I'll talk to them and if you see the chance, you've got to get those poor people away. Once the Judoon are talking to me, they shouldn't care about them anymore."

Wringing his hands, Will swallowed hard. "All right. I can do that."

"Let's go, then." David strode ahead, directly toward the rhino leader.

Their pace across the blasted ground felt interminable and Will fought to calm his heart, pounding hard in his chest as they neared the aliens. To steady himself, he kept his eyes on David, who moved like he was leading his own army into battle, his back straight and his head high. The Judoon ignored their approach and David stopped five metres behind the leader, who was still barking questions at the hapless people.

"Mo cro oh! Ro! Sho!" David shouted in a deep baritone, much lower than his normal timbre.

Too bulky to move quickly, the leader trundled around in surprise and pointed at the humanoid before him. "O lo! Po! Ro vo!"

"Yes, that's obvious." He stretched his arms to his sides as if he were inviting the rhino to take a shot at him. "Go ahead, scan me."

The leader and his two guards waved their scanners at David. "Category non-human." They scanned him again. "Confirmed non-human, traces of human." They adjusted their devices and tried one more time, as David impatiently tapped his foot. "Results inconclusive. Category unknown. What are you?"

"That's unimportant. I will speak for these humans. Do you accept me?"

"Representation accepted."

Glancing at his friend, David jerked his head toward the humans and Will began circling around the scene to reach them. He turned his attention back to the Judoon leader. "This is a level five planet. You don't have the jurisdiction, so state your purpose for being here or leave this world."

If the rhino was fazed by David's legal knowledge, he didn't show it. "Illegal weapon detected on surface of planet. Human possession of said weapon justifies extension of jurisdiction."

David's brow furrowed, a note of apprehension in his eyes. "Illegal weapon? What kind of human weapon would be considered illegal?"

"Nuclear bomb? Chemical weapons?" Will suggested as he made sure the three people were all right.

"Nah. The Shadow Proclamation doesn't care about those. Humans can blow each other up as much as they want. For them to care, it must be bad on a universal scale." He turned back to the Judoon. "Does this weapon have a name?"

"Weapon designation: total fission device."

The colour drained from David's face and, losing his composure for a moment, he sputtered, wide-eyed. "A total fission device? Here?" Clapping a hand to his mouth, he then ran it through his hair as he considered the ramifications, his eyes jerking back and forth. "No wonder you're here."

"What's that?" Will called as he sent the people off, but David waved him silent.

"What are you doing to find it?"

"Weapon location: this settlement. Optimal method of location: pattern search."

David rolled his eyes, obviously not confident in their chances of finding the thing. "Yes, I saw that. House to house. Good luck. And if you don't find it?"

"Humans will be found guilty of possession of contraband and obstruction of justice."

David swung an arm around, indicating the town. "These humans have nothing to do with it. They don't even know it exists."

Having nothing more to say, the Judoon stood there waiting.

David ran a hand through his hair again, then straightened. "All right. Let me help you find the thing then."

"You are non-human. You are an uninvolved party. You will not obstruct justice."

"I'm involved! I live here, too!," David squeaked, but the leader ignored his plea and waited impassively. "Well, then," he continued in his normal voice, sighing heavily first, "I offer myself as proxy for the humans in this settlement."

The leader pulled a different device from his belt and held it out toward him. "Designation."

"David." He seemed about to say more, but then licked his lips and closed his mouth.

"Species designation."

This time, he hesitated a full three seconds before saying the words, "Time Lord."

"You assume privileges and responsibilities of this settlement's humans. You accept this officer's verdict."

"I do."

"Affirmation recorded." The leader clicked the device and returned it to his belt. David held up his left arm and one of the guards stepped forward and clamped a thick metal bracelet around his wrist. Red and gold lights positioned around its circumference flashed periodically.

"Thank you." The sarcasm in his tone was unmistakable. "Come on, Will. We have work to do." Without sparing the rhinos another glance, David stalked off. Noticing that the three humans were standing at the edge of the park watching them, Will flashed them an encouraging smile, then jogged after his friend, who was rattling off plans - returning to the house, getting the car - assuming that his friend was following close on his heels and listening.

Once they were tolerably away from the Judoon, WIll blurted out, "What did you just do?"

David continued to stride down the sidewalk as he talked. "Bought us the permission to find that thing. They're not going to give us much time."

Will came up beside him. "But how? It didn't sound like they wanted your help."

He shook his head. "They wouldn't let me. The case is between the Shadow Proclamation and the people in the town. They considered me an outsider, even though I live here."

"So you became a proxy. What does that mean?"

"It means that I accepted responsibility for the device and the consequences if they find the town guilty of possession of an illegal weapon."

Will faltered to a stop. David continued for a few more steps before turning back, realising the other man wasn't keeping up. His arms akimbo, Will frowned at him. "Doesn't that mean...?"

"That I'll be executed. Yes." David sounded like it was the most normal occurrence in the world.

Will threw up his hands in frustration, then clenched his fists. "Why the bloody hell did you do that?"

"So we can find that device. We don't have the time to discuss this now. We have to focus."

Will stared at David, his words caught in his throat. He was convinced that David had some other reason for substituting himself for the town, though obtaining permission to search was a plausible excuse. However, now wasn't the time, and he nodded his acquiescence. "All right. We find the device and you don't die. What is it anyway?" He hoped he would have the chance to discuss this with David later.

"Come on." David beckoned and they resumed their jog. "It's called a total fission device. Basically, it takes matter apart."

"Like a nuclear bomb?"

"No. Nuclear bombs are just like regular bombs, except that they release orders of magnitude more energy and are radioactive." David fell silent for a moment as he considered how to describe the workings of the device. "What a total fission device does is cause every atom to break apart into its component quarks. It simply takes the matter apart."

"So, it disintegrates matter?"

"Sort of. The thing is the way it does it. The device has a reservoir of huon particles held in stasis."

"What particles?" Will panted out. He was starting to get winded, but his friend was still running strong.

"Huon particles." David shook his head. "You've never heard of them. They don't exist naturally anymore. They're what takes the matter apart, though normally they need to be activated. The device stores them, and then when it's detonated, it accelerates the particles so they activate instantaneously, sparking a chain reaction."

"Meaning what?" They slowed to a stop in front of David's house.

"Meaning that as long as there's matter around, the huon energy will continue tearing it apart." The man held his hands out about a foot apart and indicated the shape of a small box. "The device is about the size of a shoebox, but if used, the huon particles will chew through the entire planet in about ten minutes."

Appalled, Will just stared. "Who makes weapons like that?"

"Well, Time Lords for one, among other species." At Will's horrified gape, David shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. "They did design it, but it was considered a forbidden weapon, though they eventually used it in the Time War."

"Time War?"

David shook his head. "No time to go into that right now."

Will tried to sort everything in his head. "So this is definitely an alien weapon, then."

"Well, no..."

Will stared at his friend, his jaw dropped open. "You think _we_ could have made this thing?"

"There's always the possibility."

He still couldn't believe it. "How?"

Spinning on his heel, David began pacing. "The device itself is simple. You could build it with materials from B&Q. The difficult part is getting the huon particles, which haven't naturally existed for billions of years. Problem is, there were manufactured huon particles on Earth only two years ago. I thought they were disposed of, but..." He shrugged his lack of knowledge about their fate.

"So, how do we find the thing?"

"Follow our leads. We know a few things about it." He began ticking things off on his fingers. "First, the Shadow Proclamation has only just found out about it, so it's likely it's only just appeared recently. Second, if it's of human origin, then whoever made it has the technology to manipulate huon particles. Third, if it's of alien origin, it's very likely that if the aliens were encountered, someone would have noticed. After all, we have already established that aliens behave strangely and suspiciously." His irony wasn't lost on Will. "So, we're searching for new things in town, high-technology companies, and people exhibiting weird behaviour. That's what I need you for. You know this town so your insight is invaluable."

"Me?" Will waved his hands in front of him, a disbelieving smile on his face as he shook his head. "Oh, no. I don't know anything. You've lived here longer."

"Yes, but you've actually been out and about, on your own and with Ben. I know where the Tesco is and that's all. And," he held up a hand to stop Will's next protest, "we don't have time to find anyone else to help, considering how much explaining I'll have to do _again_." He pointed a finger up and down his own body to make it clear what he was talking about. Spinning toward his door, he called over his shoulder as he trotted off. "Bring your laptop."

"What for?"

"You'll be researching targets while I drive." He fumbled with the lock.

"I'll use my phone. Wi-fi isn't universal yet, mate."

"It is for you." Cracking the door open, he turned back to his friend. "I don't have internet access, Will. Never needed it. When I hooked your computer in, I gave you universal wi-fi, accessible anywhere, any time. You've got a super laptop. Go get it. We need to start now." David wheeled and, pushing the door open, ran in and bolted upstairs, taking the steps three at a time.

Will scampered off to his own house, his mind reeling with planet-destroying weapons, super laptops, and huon particles. An hour before, life had been so normal, so simple, and now, he was working to save the town, if not the world. He burst into his study and snatched up his laptop, yanking off the cords and dashing back out again. _Well_ , he clarified to himself, _the town isn't in danger, except as part of the world. The person we're trying to save is David._ Using that thought as his focus, he jogged to a stop and closed his eyes, breathing deep to concentrate, to tuck the chaos away for later contemplation and focus on what would lead them to the device.

Will arrived at the car just as David emerged from his house, typing something into his phone, which he then stuffed into his pocket as he pulled out his keys. The two men scrambled into the car and as David started the engine, Will opened up his laptop.

"First place I could think of was Borne Technologies. I'll head there while you set up."

Will was tapping his hand on his leg impatiently as the computer booted up. "No, there's a place closer we should check out. Go out to Spaulding and turn right."

"Okay." David set the car in motion. "What's there?"

"You said weird, so we're checking out weird. There's an old man, just moved into a house on Branham, builds these strange wire sculptures out in front of his house."

David grinned. "Good! That's good."

"Come on, come on! Why does this thing always take so long to boot?" Will smacked the side of the screen as if that would help it run faster.

"I could fix it so that -"

"No! I mean, no thanks, it's fine. Just a little bit more."

With Will's guidance, they arrived at the house in a few short minutes. Jumping out of the car, Will ran up to the door and knocked as David pulled his phone out of his pocket and waved it around the statues in the front garden as it emitted a high-pitched warbling screech. He shook his head, mumbling that they seemed to be "perfectly normal weird wire sculptures" then trotted up to Will. "No, let me. We really don't have the time." Checking the doorknob and finding it locked, he pointed the phone at it, and after another short burst of screechy noise, the door clicked open. "Come on."

As soon as they were in the door, the two men separated into different rooms. "What would it look like?" Will called over his shoulder as he gazed around the completely normal-looking lounge, then began pushing things aside to see behind and under them.

"Anything out-of-place or too technological for a normal human's dwelling. I found his workshop." This time the high trill lasted for a long time.

"I don't see anything. I'll check the kitchen."

"Nothing here. Upstairs for me."

After a few more minutes, they regrouped in the car and Will set them on a route to a new computer store that had recently sprung up in a nearby mall. This far out from the park, there were far more people milling around, staring up at the distant spaceship while police officers tried to maintain some semblance of order.

Will couldn't suppress his curiosity. "So, what is that thing? It's obviously not just a phone."

"It's a sonic phone."

There was silence for a moment. "Were all Time Lords rubbish at coming up with names for things?"

"Probably. It's a sonic probe, really, built into a phone case. Uses sonic technology to do things, like scan for information and open locked doors. I thought I should have one, and everyone carries a mobile nowadays, so... It's very useful. The Doctor carries a…" David faltered, spots of colour rising on his cheeks. "Well, he's got probe, too."

Will squinted suspiciously at him. "What does he call it?"

David cleared his throat. "His is a sonic screwdriver."

"You're pulling my leg."

"I'm not."

"You're all barmy."

"I can agree with that assessment."

There was a half-minute of silence in the car before Will spoke again. "So that thing can detect the device."

"More or less. I'm scanning for non-terrestrial technology and huon particles. That may not be enough, though. It won't find it if the device is human-made and if the particle containment unit is robust. I'd like to think that humans don't have the technology yet to fully mask huon particles, but...""

Will nodded. "And that's why we're looking manually."

"Yup."

Stopping at the mall that Will had directed them to, they found that, exactly as they expected, it was more or less empty, with only skeleton crews of employees in stores, if the stores were open at all. Many of them were locked up and dark, including the computer store that they had come to find. David disabled the security system and unlocked the door with his sonic, and they burst in to search. Luckily, the store and its storeroom were small enough that they could cover it in a few minutes, and they left empty-handed. They sped out of the parking lot toward Borne Technologies whilst Will continued to search for the new and the weird in town.

"There's a new Thai restaurant down on Islip." Will tapped the bookmark icon. "I don't see how it might be related, but I could go for a pad thai later." David groaned. "What? You don't like Thai food?"

"Traffic." At David's pained declaration, Will glanced up to see that two blocks ahead, the streets were clogged. "We're getting far enough out that we're running into people fleeing town. We don't have time for this."

"Borne is five blocks down that way. Maybe it's faster to run?"

David chewed on his thumb as he assessed the traffic and the parking situation. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. There's a spot just up there." He pulled into the spot and the two of them jumped out, sprinting off toward the tech firm, weaving among the gawkers on the sidewalk.

As they ran up the steps to the glass front doors of the building, through which they could clearly see the firm's security desk, Will panted to David, "So, what's the plan?" This brought the alien up short, and he thumbed his chin as he thought.

"I don't know. How do we get in to search?" He set his fists on his hips as he stared the building.

"Do you know anyone who works here? We can say we're visiting."

David stared at Will, completely taken aback. " _Me_ know anyone? Will, honestly, I know you and your coworkers, out of the entire town."

"Then how do you know anything about Borne Technologies, if you're that much of a stranger?"

He wagged a finger at Will. "I keep my eye out for any possible sources of materials for the TARDIS. Borne does encryption and communication hardware and software, some for military clients. They're the most likely place in town that might have stumbled upon huon particles and how to control them."

"They're not likely to let us in easily, then."

"No." David sighed. "This always looks so much easier on the telly!"

"Well, we don't have time to waste standing here."

"No. Let's circle the building and hope their containment system is faulty enough that there's detectable huon spillage. I'll boost the probe." David tapped all over the phone's touchscreen, and though Will couldn't believe that the random-seeming touches meant anything, he could see the circles and lines reconfiguring themselves under the man's fingers. "Okay, got it. Let's go."

Whilst David used the phone to scan the walls, the two men circled the entire two blocks the company inhabited, making sure to pass between the two buildings, under the connecting walkways, to get the best coverage possible. Still, he found nothing, and the two headed back to the car.

The search continued with the same lack of results after seven other stops. None of Will's suggestions, though reasonable, gave them any confidence, and after each failure, their morale dropped. After the traffic snarl at Borne, he tried to suggest more places within the clearer areas, but they were soon forced into areas that were clogged with traffic or were cordoned off by the police. The eighth stop was chosen merely for convenience: they were stopped in a tangle of cars and Will happened to spot a new New Age shop that still had its temporary cloth sign covering the more permanent sign of the shop it had replaced. Pulling into the mouth of an alley, the two jogged to the shop though they didn't expect to find anything, and five minutes later, they stepped back out onto the pavement with nothing new to show.

"I just don't know, David." Will glanced up and down the street, looking for any clues, anything that might spark an idea.

David pulled at his hair with both hands. "Why do I feel like we're missing something? Something so obvious. Why are they searching for this device now? What's happened since -"

An insistent, high-pitched alarm cut across David's words, beeping in sync with the lights that started flashing on his bracelet. Startled passersby shot him suspicious looks, and he grabbed at it, pushing a button to silence it. He turned to Will. "It's time."

"What's time?"

He held up the bracelet. "The Judoon are calling me back. They've given me the minimum amount of time allowed by law to turn the device over to them, and it's time for sentencing."

"But we haven't found it yet!"

"That's immaterial to them." He glanced in the direction of the park. "It's a hike from here, at least forty-five minutes if I don't rush, so you'll have that much time. Here." He handed him the phone. "It's set to try to detect the device. Just point and press that button on the side." He demonstrated and the device whirred. "If it doesn't find anything, the display will look like this, with circles locking together like this. If it finds something, there will be a circle here and here, and a line going like this."

"Is that a language?"

"Yes, that's Gallifreyan." He handed the phone and the keys to Will. "Just keep moving, check out any idea that occurs to you. It's time to grasp at any remote possibility. Now…" David caught Will's eye. "One other thing. Keep an eye on the sky. If you see helicopters arrive, that'll be UNIT coming up from London. Find them and tell them 'code nine'. That's the code for the Doctor and they'll pay attention. Let them know everything about what the Judoon are looking for, and they can take over from there."

"What about you?"

David shrugged. "Tell them whatever you want. By that time, it won't matter what they know about me."

Will shot David a look, worry and sarcasm mixed in equal amounts. "That's not what I meant. How are you going to get out of this? There's got to be a way."

David idly played with the bracelet. "There isn't. The contract's been made, and I agreed to abide by it." Stepping forward, he clapped Will on the arm. "I've got to go. Good luck, Will." His eyes flashed golden, and he turned and walked in the general direction of the park.

Will stared after him for a moment, his stomach a deep pit of fear. The man was strolling away like he was on a Sunday walk, enjoying the sunshine and the warm summer air. The only hints of anything out of the ordinary were the knots of people staring at the towering gray cylinder above the town's skyline, and none of them knew that the man passing them by was offering his life in exchange for their safety. Squeezing the keys in his hand, Will clenched his jaw and sprinted for the car.

Another stop, another ten minutes spent, and another failed search. Will took to pointing the phone out of the car and pressing the button; since he had no idea what the range of the device was, he was hoping against hope that the thing might pick up something, anything, but the display never changed. He drove past the construction site for a new petrol station and on a whim, hopped out of the car to search that - nothing.

Leaning against the surrounding fence, he felt all of the hope drain from him. He had twenty-five minutes left to save his friend, and he was out of ideas. Well, he still had a list of tech-y or science-y places to check out, but it all felt futile, after so many failures to find the device. Perhaps if these places were known to work with alien technology, they'd seem more promising, but he was starting to doubt that normal humans had made the device.

 _If that's the case, then the device is alien. What does that mean to me?_ David had been concerned about the fact that the Judoon only just now showed up to confiscate the device, which meant that it only just arrived on Earth. He snorted. _If they knew it just arrived, wouldn't these inept rhinos be able to figure out who brought it here? Unless it's always been here. David said it came from some war, something to do with time. What if it came here then, and then something changed just now to make them notice?_ Popping up from the fence, he began pacing back and forth. _Then what changed?_

In mid-turn, Will froze, his jaw dropping open. His eyes widened, and the muscles in his cheeks twitched a very faint smile. Leaping into the air, he whooped and sprinted back to the car.

. _ . _ . _ . _ .

It came as no surprise to Will that the old church's parking lot was nearly full. With an alien spaceship dominating the town, many people would seek spiritual guidance, and perhaps they might feel that the building itself provides some unnameable protection. As he pulled the car into the first available space, he mumbled his own prayer in the direction of where he thought the altar would stand: a prayer that he was right. Hopping out of the car, he sprinted off, skirting a surprised old couple who were heading toward the church's door.

What Will was looking for wasn't in the church itself, and in fact, was on one distant corner of the grounds. As he rounded the corner of the building, he saw what he was looking for, over a rise: the white tops of the tents that stood around the archaeological dig. He'd been here once before when he had visited with Ben, standing outside the roped-off area watching the scientists at work. They hadn't been allowed closer, to minimise distraction and contamination, but this time, nothing was going to keep him out.

Running as fast as he could, he topped the rise and scrambled down the slope to the roped boundary. The only person in sight was one very nervous-looking security guard, who stared at Will warily but seemed happy to keep his distance. Will assumed that all the others had fled when the spaceship landed and this poor sod had drawn the short straw of guarding the dig until the bitter end. He pulled David's mobile out of his pocket and, holding his breath, pushed the button and waved it back and forth, pointing it at different areas of the dig as it trilled. He kept his eyes glued to the display, and when it scanned the tent that stood about ten metres to the right, the pattern of circles changed. _Circle. Circle. And a line just so._ He wondered if it meant anything that the shapes had turned from blue to red.

"Yes!" He pumped his fist, then hopped over the rope and ran for the tent.

"Hey! Hey, you!" came the immediate call. The guard ran over and tried to get in Will's way. "You can't come in here. This area is restricted to university researchers."

Will tried to dodge past him. "Get out of my way. There's something very important in there that I need to get."

The guard was slightly smaller than Will, but was doing a good job of keeping him from nearing the tent. "I'm sorry, but if you can't produce university credentials, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Oh, right, papers. Okay, sure." Will stepped back and reached for his wallet, but as soon as the guard relaxed, Will leapt past him and ducked into the tent.

"Oi!"

The tent was filled with boxes and supplies, as well as a few tables for field work, on which were tools, samples, mounted cameras, and labeling equipment. Will's target, however, was obvious: a metallic grey box etched with the patterns of circles and lines that were now so familiar to him. "Aha! There you are!" He strode over the table and, reaching for it, hesitated, afraid to touch it.

"Leave that alone! That is a priceless artefact from this dig, and it belongs to the university." The guard had one hand out in a mollifying gesture while the other hand was busy unhooking the club from his belt.

"Look, I need to take this." He jabbed a finger at the box. "This is the item that the aliens in the spaceship want. I give it to them and they go away quietly. I don't, and they kill us all."

The guard pursed his lips sarcastically. "Right. The aliens are after an ancient Roman box. Now, just step away from it and come outside."

"This isn't an ancient Roman box. Does it look Roman?" The guard glanced at it, and Will smirked. "Would you even know what a Roman artefact looks like?"

"That's not my job." His tone switched to mollifying. "Look, we'll call one of the archaeologists and he can tell you what that is."

Will lost his temper and stepped forward to scream at the guard. "There's no time! The aliens have my friend, and they're going to kill him within fifteen minutes if they don't get this thing."

"Hey, now, calm down. I -"

"Look at this!" He held up the phone, showing the guard the display. "I was given this by an alien to find that box. It has the same pattern on it. This thing is alien. It's not Roman. And I need to get it to them."

The guard squinted at the pattern, then at the box. He clearly thought that Will was crazy, but the evidence on the mobile was difficult to ignore. "I... I..."

"I don't have the time!" Will thundered. "Here!" Pulling out his wallet, he found his debit card and tossed it to the guard, who fumbled it and dove after it as it fell to the ground. "The PIN is five-seven-oh-three. Take as much as you want." He grabbed the box, which was surprisingly light for something made of sturdy metal, and brushed past the stunned man.

By the time he made it back to the car, he was completely winded, but he started it and zoomed out of the parking lot without stopping to catch his breath. There'd be time for that later, he hoped. He sped through the maze of streets, praying that all the policemen were on crowd control, and swore loudly at every stop and delay. Reaching the boundary between the Judoon search area and the parts of the town that they hadn't yet reached, he bulled his way through the crowd, gunning the engine to scare people out of his way. As soon as the road was clear, he took off again, glad that David hadn't spared any expense on the engine of his sports car.

Now that he was in the area the Judoon had searched, it was clear sailing, as few people dared to venture into the area the rhinos seemed to control; after all, they didn't have Will's knowledge that the aliens wouldn't even pay attention to them. Thus, he travelled at a higher velocity than he thought was safe on these narrow residential streets, trying not to think of the possibility that he was already too late.

It was not difficult to find his object, as the spaceship filled the sky in front of him, and he jumped the car over the curb into the park, across the once-grassy lawn, directly under the spaceship to the Judoon leader. To his relief, David was there, standing directly in front of the commander. At the sound of the engine, David turned and, recognising the car, broke into a wide, hopeful smile. Bringing the car to a screeching halt, Will jumped out with the box.

"I have it! This is it, isn't it?"

"Oh yes! That's it!"

David stepped forward to take it, but the Judoon roared, "Remit the total fission device." One of his guards pushed David aside none too gently and held out his gauntleted hands for it. Will glanced at David for instructions.

The man nodded. "Go ahead."

Will placed the box in the guard's hands and stepped back to watch. The guard handed it to the platoon leader, who inspected it and analysed it with his handheld scanner.

"Category: disintegration weapon. Mode of operation: matter fission." He turned to David. "Case closed."

Spinning back to Will, David clasped his hands to his head. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! Will, you're a star!"

As the platoon leader turned away to bark orders into his communicator, Will trotted over. "It was at the dig site at the church. The archaeologists had just found it."

David snapped his fingers. "That's why the Shadow Proclamation only knows about it now! It was hidden all this time! Oh, absolutely brilliant, Will!"

He held David's phone and keys out to him. "Here. Does this colour mean anything?"

David glanced at the display and gasped, murmuring, "No!" He stared at Will, aghast. "It's armed. That's why they detected it. It wasn't just that they unearthed it. Somehow it got armed!" He spun and bellowed at the leader, "Ko mo ro! Fo! Tho sho do sto!"

The leader turned back to him. "Device confiscated. Jurisdiction expired."

"Oh, so thick!" David groaned. "Listen to me. That thing is going to detonate and take out your ship, or if you get it back home, the entire Shadow Proclamation. I'm one of only three people in the entire universe who can disarm it. You've got to let me do it."

The rhino gestured to his guard, who brought the box back and handed it to David. "Disarm the device."

The man rolled his eyes and breathed a sarcastic "Thank you." He dropped to the ground, his legs folding beneath him as he settled into a cross-legged posture with the box in his lap. Inspecting the etchings on each side, he began working, running his hands over the surface and buzzing it with his phone until, inexplicably to Will's eyes, the lid popped open. He continued to work with his hands inside the box, pulling a pen from his pocket to poke the innards occasionally. Will watched him, hugging himself nervously.

After nearly ten minutes of work, David closed the lid and stood up. "It's done." He handed the box back to the guard. "Thank you."

As the guard marched into the spaceship with his prize and the leader returned to recalling his troops, Will sighed with relief. "I'm glad you knew how to do that."

"I didn't. I'm hardly an expert on ancient, forbidden weapons." He gestured toward the retreating rhino. "But the arming instructions were written on the case. I basically worked backward as best I could."

"You what?" Will squeaked.

David seemed unperturbed. "There were a few stumbling blocks, but they were relatively straightforward to deal with."

Will glanced up at the Judoon spaceship above them, then gaped at David. "So you could have set that thing off?"

"Yes.

He couldn't believe his ears. "Here? On Earth?"

"Oh yes."

"You could have destroyed the planet! And for what? To save them?" He jabbed a hand at the spaceship above them. "The aliens that were going to kill us for something that wasn't our fault?" Will fell speechless, his sudden anger burning in his chest. Glaring at David, he balled his fists and shook as he held himself back. "You...!"

David straightened, his eyes cold. "It needed to be done, and quickly. I knew they wouldn't let me go with them to disarm it off-planet, but I was not going to let them die, either. I refuse to choose between the lives of humans and that of any other species. Make of that what you will." David glanced around at the Judoon organising their departure. "I'm not needed here anymore." Slipping his phone into his pocket, he turned on his heel and strode off to his car. In a moment, he was in the driver's seat and roaring off, out of the park toward home.


	11. Chapter 11

About fifteen minutes after the Judoon spaceship took off, a UNIT helicopter flew into town and landed in the blasted park. Of course, by that time, Will had made himself scarce, retreating to an area the rhinos had never reached in order to lose himself in the crowd. Once he had convinced himself that he wouldn't be singled out as anyone who might know something, he followed the press of people trying to find out what had happened. Thus, he observed the arrival of UNIT ground troops about an hour later and began to hear the snippets of rumours of a pair of men who talked the aliens down and convinced them to leave. The stories grew more ludicrous as the day wore on, and by the time he decided to head home, he was sure no one could tie him to the event.

One thing he did make sure to do whilst wandering with the crowd was to catch up on the calls and texts he had been ignoring all afternoon, since just after the alien ship had landed. The first call he made was to his family down in London to inform them of what was happening in the town and assure them that he was quite safe. Dealing with his coworkers was a different matter. He was reluctant to tell anyone anything, but after noticing that he had nearly twenty messages waiting, each one more worried than the last, he resorted to sending Ben a short text saying that both he and David were fine. He was sure that Ben would relay the message to everyone else.

In the early evening, Will returned home to find that his windows had been blown out by the sonic boom and that it had been searched by the Judoon, as he had expected. Though they hadn't inflicted any deliberate damage, the bulky, clumsy rhinos had destroyed a number of items just by moving around. Will counted himself lucky, though, as he'd heard stories of houses with structural damage from the careless aliens. Since the evening was quite warm, the open windows were a blessing, so he resolved to cover the broken windows with cardboard and call a glazing firm the next day, telling himself that they at least stood to make a profit from this disaster. He then spent the rest of the night on the sofa, quite drained, alternately watching nothing he later remembered and news reports of the invasion on the telly. His phone rang occasionally with calls from his coworkers, but he ignored them all.

Will was greeted at work the next day with relief; he'd been the only person unaccounted for after everyone had fled the picnic, and though Ben had informed them that Will had reported in, they had all been nervous until they actually saw him. When asked the inevitable questions about what had happened to him, he told them a tale he had carefully crafted the night before; he didn't care if they thought he was stupid or cowardly, but he didn't want them thinking he knew anything about what had really happened. So he explained that, rather than running, he'd hidden and gotten trapped among the houses. He'd managed to avoid the aliens, but been too scared to try to make his way past them. This caused a spate of questions: what were the aliens like up close, what did they want, did he see what happened to them? He answered the first one happily and in great detail, receiving several satisfyingly awed looks, but shrugged at the other two, telling them only that they had seemed to be looking for something, and eventually his coworkers left him alone. The rest of the day went smoothly, though actual productivity was down, due to frequent breakouts of discussions of the invasion. Will also had to take some time to call his bank to deactivate his debit card and request a new one; he figured a day was plenty enough time for the guard at the dig to collect his bribe, and he was pleased to find that the man hadn't been too greedy. As the week wore on, life returned to normal.

It was the evenings that were difficult. The Friday crowd went out to the pub on Monday night, to drink away the previous day's events, though Will appropriated Ben's keys and designated himself the driver; it was a great cover excuse for staying sober to avoid inadvertently admitting his involvement with the Judoon. Arriving home way too late after driving people home and despairing about having to wake up early to pick them up on the way to work, he walked into his house to find his laptop on the floor, leaning against the wall just inside the door. _Of course he can get past locks. He did as much yesterday._ Too tired to think about it, he snatched up the device and deposited it on the desk in his study before trudging upstairs and falling into bed fully clothed.

The next evening, as usual, he walked past David's house on the way home from the bus stop. Maintaining the nonchalance in his gait, he kept his eyes averted, intently studying the scuffs on the tyre of the car of the neighbour who lived between them. Once at his own door, he slipped in and collapsed on the couch, staring at the ceiling. He wanted nothing to do with that... that alien. He just couldn't get the images from Sunday out of his mind: the gigantic spaceship, the rhino army, the terrified people, David standing in front of the Judoon leader and taking responsibility for the town and the world, the unremarkable metal box that could swallow the planet, the man defending his choice to risk the human race to save the aliens, and, most of all, two shining, golden eyes staring at him from the face of a man who had been his best friend in town but whom, it turned out, he didn't know at all. David had deceived him all along, and he wondered just how much truth the man had ever spoken. Could he trust anything he had said, or will say?

Grunting in frustration, he jumped up from the couch, strode into the kitchen to fetch a bag of crisps and a pop, and settled in his study in front of the computer to lose himself in his favorite online game. Fifteen minutes later, he was up again and heading back to the couch: his super-powered player character and the fantasy monsters trying to kill him somehow hit too close to home. Flicking the telly on, he again spent the rest of the night staring at anything that could distract him. Wednesday night turned out to be much of the same.

As time passed, it became easier and easier to tuck the events of Sunday deep into a dark corner of his mind. Friday night's pub crawl was back to normal, with only a few mentions of the alien visitation, mostly with humourous hindsight. Inquiries were made as to where David was and why he didn't come out with them tonight, and Will deflected them by saying that the man had new obligations and may not be joining them much in the future. Though they were disappointed, everyone accepted what he said without question and returned to their usual discussions of their personal lives, upcoming movies, and work hardships. Will was relieved that everyone had bounced back so well, himself included. On Saturday, he met up with Michael to check out his pub league team and spent much of the afternoon playing football on a pitch across town. By the time he returned home, he was very happily exhausted, and after dinner, he settled in front of his computer to finally get back to his online game.

Will hadn't been in the game long when a knock sounded at his front door. Typing out an excuse to his friends, he trotted to the front door and peered through the peephole. As he expected, David was standing out on the porch, waiting patiently with his hands jammed in his pockets. Will's stomach flipped, and he forced a neutral face as he opened the door.

"Hello."

"Will." David's demeanour was placid over a cold, hard core. "I'm sorry to bother you. I simply wanted to bid you goodbye, and to thank you for the last four months and for your help with the Judoon. I owe you at least that much."

Will barely managed to not goggle at the man. He had figured that eventually they'd have to talk and had wondered what David might say, but he hadn't expected that. "You're leaving?"

"Yes. I'm taking long overdue responsibility for my life, including not living off the Doctor's generosity any longer." He glanced in the direction of his house. "It's all cleaned up and cleared out, ready for him to return to when he needs it. Well, I left the furniture. No need to discard that."

"Oh! Let me return this, then." Will started digging in his pocket for his keyring.

David shook his head. "No, keep it. There are extra copies, and the Doctor won't mind if you need it."

"I don't want it," he stated as he started to work the key off the ring.

"Keep it anyway. Just for the convenience, just in case. You could probably even live in it if you wanted, so you don't have to pay rent here. He's not going to mind."

Will could tell that David was not going to accept it and stuffed the keyring back in his pocket, resolving to throw the key away later. He searched for something more to say. "Er, where are you going? Are you staying in Britain?"

"That would defeat the purpose. I'd just be endangering a different group of people, wouldn't I?" He continued to be aloof and inscrutable, his alien nature almost tangible, making Will shiver inside. "I rigged up a very basic dematerialisation circuit for the TARDIS. She's not really ready for one, but it should be safe enough to make it into the time vortex." Realising Will wouldn't know what he was talking about, he began to explain like a university professor. "The time vortex is the stream of time that connects every point in time and space together. You may picture it as a completely different dimension, made of time and nothing else. The circuit will allow the TARDIS to disappear from here and go into there."

"Okay." Except for the concept of this vortex being another dimension, Will didn't understand at all what he meant, and he figured the details weren't important, so he dismissed it. "And where will you go from there?"

"Nowhere. The TARDIS won't be able to materialise anywhere until she's grown a bit more and I've managed to complete the dematerialisation circuit."

Will frowned. The more David said about his plans, the less he understood. "How long will that take?"

"Objectively, in the time vortex, no time passes at all. Or you could say that all time passes. Subjectively..." As he calculated, his eyes wandered to the frame of the door above Will. "A year? Fifteen months at the outside."

Will opened his mouth to protest the idea that David was going spend a year alone in an empty dimension when he realised what the man was actually doing, and his brow furrowed in concern. "You're exiling yourself," he breathed. "You're exiling yourself from the universe."

"Not the words I'd choose, no." He seemed puzzled by the concept.

"But that's exactly it. Why? You don't have to do that, David."

"Don't I?" Detached and emotionless, he spoke like a bailiff listing the charges levied against a defendant. "I don't belong here or anywhere, and I bring danger to everyone around me. It doesn't matter if they're human or alien. And the worst thing is that I don't realise that I do. That makes me the most dangerous type of person. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never have, but I always do." Remorse flitted across his face and he glanced away, at the flowers planted to the side of Will's door, but when he looked back up, his eyes were cold and flat again. "In the time vortex, I can't, and when I come out, I'll at least be equipped to be what I really am."

"No, you're wrong." Will's words were quiet but adamant.

David's gaze snapped to Will's face, confused and suspicious. "No, don't, Will. It's over. I'm done. I-"

Will cut him off with a wave of his hand. All of Will's nebulous thoughts about David's betrayal and lack of empathy had crystallised into a clear picture of the entire problem, and he wasn't going to let the man slink away without addressing it. "That's what you were doing, weren't you? I mean, you were trying to buy time to find the device and save the town from the Judoon verdict, but you had a third motive, deep down. You were trying to find a way to die without actually killing yourself, because you think you're putting everyone in harm's way just by being here."

"No! I would never!" David's denied Will's statement immediately, but he couldn't meet the man's eyes.

"Yes, you would!" Will exclaimed, certain he was right. "That's exactly it! You're so sure that the problem is you, and you just love the idea of martyring yourself. It's just like this completely mental plan of losing yourself in time or whatever you said, so you can't hurt anyone anymore. Well, mate, you're wrong. You don't bring danger with you. It's not your fault the space rhinos came here, and if it hadn't been for you, if you hadn't been here to sort everything out and buy us the time to find that device, we'd all be dead, and then the planet would have exploded."

He stepped forward, forcing David to retreat a step, and let the door slam behind him. "But I'll tell you what _is_ your fault. You don't let anyone anywhere near you. You share only what you think you can get away with, and pretend to be someone you're not. That's the failure here. That's how you hurt people. That's why it's come down to this. How am I supposed to trust you, if you won't trust me enough to show me who you are?"

Bright golden light burst from David's eyes and he sneered at his friend, hissing through bared teeth. "Look at me, Will. How do I show anyone this? How do I tell them that I have two hearts and that I solve higher-order differential equations in my head and that I'm building a time machine in my bedroom, without having them run away screaming or show up at my door with torches and pitchforks?" The light in his eyes winked out. "I'm an alien among humans. I can't go back to being what I was, and humans won't accept me for what I am now. All I can do is pretend to be normal. I'm an actor, a very highly trained one, and pretending is what I do best."

"Horseshit!"

Taken aback, David sputtered before he could reply. "You have no concept of how good an actor I might be."

Will shrugged. "From what I can see, you're terrible, because by your own admission, you _don't_ fit in among us humans." He spun away for a moment, scrubbing a hand over his eyes as he tried to compose his thoughts. Turning back to David, he shook his head sadly. "Don't you see? You can't make us accept you, especially by pretending to be something you're not. You have to be yourself, and you have trust us that we'll value you for who you are." He caught David's eye and nodded slowly as he spoke. "That's the same for everyone, no matter who they are."

David drew himself up straight, his eyes glowing dangerously. "I am not 'everyone'. You are human, and that's how _you_ work. I am a Time Lord."

Will snorted. "Are you now?" His tone was lightly mocking. "You told me before that you weren't, that you were both human and Time Lord. Well." He crossed his arms, looking David up and down. "I guess you're a Time Lord now, eh? I haven't the foggiest what that is, but I'll tell you what I see when I look at you. I see a man who's found a place where he's happy, where he feels at home, who's working on realising his dreams, and who wants to feel like he's part of something, even if it it's just a circle of friends at the pub. And you know what? That's no different from any other human I've ever met."

David's throat visibly contracted as he swallowed, and he began to stutter. "I... I'm not -"

"Yes, I'm sure you're not." Will stepped forward and grasped David's arm. His voice was suddenly soft with gentle encouragement. "David. Don't leave, mate. You said you feel different, that you don't remember what you used to be. Then learn who you are, and become who you want to be." He waved his hand around to indicate the entire world around them. "That's what life is. It's what everyone else does, and I'm sure it's no different for Time Lords than it is for humans. And you can't do it alone, locked away by yourself in another dimension."

David glanced away, shaking his head. "Will, I can't. I'm not human anymore. I don't belong here. Every day, I look around and I see you and everyone else, and I feel so wrong, so far away, so alone."

Will leaned back against his door. "You're repeating yourself, mate, and I think it's because you don't have any other excuses to make. You don't need to be human to live here, to be one of us. The only thing that makes you belong here is you. Your species doesn't matter. In fact, it's kind of exciting to be able to say that I have an alien for a best mate." Will grinned mischievously.

David peered up at Will, wary. "Only a little while ago, you wanted me gone."

He glanced away, contrite and embarrassed. "Not anymore. That was fear talking. I got a glimpse of who you are, and I'm going to be straight with you, mate: you are bloody terrifying. Your glowing eyes, and you striding in there and confronting that army, and disarming that bomb. And..." He gulped as he forced himself to state the thing about David that scared him the most. "And offering yourself to the Judoon, to save us. You were ready to die for people who you thought hated you! I think I was more afraid of you than I was of the alien spaceship and the rhino police."

With a rueful laugh, David shook his head. "Yes, I can understand that. The unknown, the unfathomable is the scariest of all." He squared himself with his friend and looked him right in the eye. "Will, you have to understand this. I'm no longer human, but that's what I've been for most of my life, and I love this planet and its people. But in truth, I am a Time Lord, and because of that, I have a responsibility to beyond the right here and right now, and I cannot always put humans first, much as I desperately want to. I cannot guarantee that being around me is safe, and I cannot promise that anything I might do is in the best interests of the Earth, but I am your friend and I can promise that I will do everything within my power to protect you. Do you trust me, Will?"

In his wide, clear eyes, all of his fears were laid plain. Will could see that the man was terrified that Will would reject him, that Will could not understand that he must have a different world view and different priorities than humans. Will knew that he might never comprehend David's thoughts and decisions, but he also knew that it was not important in the slightest. He drew himself up and returned David's gaze with steadfast resolution. "I trust you, David. Do you trust me?"

David didn't hesitate, not even one beat. "With my life." He proffered his hand, and Will grasped it. David broke into the most brilliant, delighted smile that Will had ever seen on his friend's face, and he couldn't resist returning it.

"Come on." David turned to lead his friend back to his house. "We can order a pizza."

"What for?"

He turned back. "I promised you I'd tell you everything. It's going to take a while, and you're not going to believe most of it. I figured I could convince you with pizza and beer."

"Well, I already ate, and anyway, I'm kind of busy." WIth a sheepish grin, Will jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "My friends are waiting for me to go on a raid. I really need to get back to them."

David laughed and smiled at Will fondly. "You'll have to work harder to offend me. I'm not quite _that_ naive. And I know you're burning with curiosity about what I'm going to tell you."

"It was worth a try. Let me go log off, at least." Pushing the door open with his shoulder, he strode back into the house to his study, David just behind him. Arching his hand over the keyboard, he tapped a few keys to instantly close the game and start the shutdown process, then turned back to his friend. "There is something I'd like to know, if I can ask?"

Crossing his arms, David leaned back against the door jamb. "Fire away."

Will cocked his head to one side. "What's your name?"

"Eh?" He hadn't been expecting that question.

Afraid that he might have touched a raw nerve, Will sat back against the desk, scratching his fingernails underneath the edge. "I noticed that you've avoided stating your full name at least twice now. What is it?"

Rubbing the back of his neck, David spun away in thought. He paced back into the hallway, then turned back to his friend. "One thing I learned from the Doctor is the importance of a name. Maybe this is a Time Lord thing, I don't know, but your name reflects who you are, maybe only on a personal level, but there it is. I've had a couple of different names, depending on who I was or what I had become, but I've always been David. So, that's my name. I'll tell you the other names when I tell you my story, because that's who I was back then, and maybe someday, if I change, if I realise I've become someone else, then my name will change, but for now, I'm David."

Will nodded. "It's a pleasure to meet you, David."

"Likewise, Will."


	12. Chapter 12

Despite the fact that David always encouraged him to consider his house as his second home, Will hesitated before unlocking the front door and walking in unannounced. It felt like invading his privacy or forcing himself on his friend, something he could prevent with a simple call or text beforehand. However, David had specifically asked him not to do so, saying that having to drop what he was doing to respond was a worse interruption in his eyes. He'd rather have Will drop by, so that if he truly didn't want to be interrupted, he could simply say so without pausing his work. And so Will found himself back in the house he had once thought he'd never be welcome in again, gazing down the familiar plain entry hall.

It had been a full week since the alien had shared his life story over beer and snacks. That tale had been strange enough that the next morning, Will had wondered if it had been distorted into something unrecognisable by the alcohol, but he really hadn't drunk _that_ much, and David had continued to insist that all of it was true. Thus, Will had spent the week doing his job, playing his computer games, and going out with his friends while his head was bubbling with alternate universes, aliens and spaceships, Time Lords who could transform themselves into humans, humans getting transformed into Time Lords, and clone bodies and consciousness transfers. He did wonder how much David hadn't told him, for he knew that though the man had promised to tell him everything, that simply wasn't possible and everyone had their secrets. He had no interest in prying to find out what he might have withheld; he trusted his friend and was confident that if he needed to know something, David would tell him.

Indistinct sounds of movement floated down to him, and he supposed that the alien was in his time machine, working. Hesitating a moment, afraid that when it came down to it, David really wouldn't want someone walking into his house at any time, he finally called out, "Hoy, David!"

An immediate answer sounded above. "Will! Come on up!" Surprised by the hearty welcome, Will trotted up the stairs, into the room at the top. It appeared the same as the last time he'd been here, including the door to the metal cylinder standing slightly ajar. He approached it and pushed it open, poking his head in.

The incongruity between the small size of the cylinder and the enormous space within it made him slightly dizzy. As before, the area was packed with materials, workbenches, tools, and the odd table in the center; David, protected by a heavy work apron, was hunched over a workbench, working on an object with a metal-handled tool tipped with a humming crystal, a device mounted on his glasses that Will assumed helped him see minute things.

"Can I come in?" His voice was almost a whisper, afraid to distract his friend.

"Of course!" Though his tone was friendly and conversational, David continued to concentrate on his work. "Any time the door's open, you're welcome inside. If it's closed, you won't be able to get in." He dropped the crystal tool on the work surface and grabbed another, applying it to his target. "I'll be just a moment, if you don't mind."

"Take your time."

Will hadn't had an opportunity to really look at David's spaceship the other time he'd been inside, so he strolled around, in turns awestruck by the impossibility of it all and intrigued by the piles of materials and tools all around him. He was also puzzled by David's passing mentions of the spaceship needing to grow, and he peered closely at this item or that to try to figure it out.

A number of minutes passed in which the silence in the chamber was broken only by Will's footsteps and a cacophony of clicks, whirrs, bangs, clanks, and occasional unrecognisable exclamations, which Will guessed from the tone of voice were alien expletives. Eventually, David straightened and, pulling the specs with the viewing device off, grinned proudly. "There, finally done! Only took me three days, too! Isn't she a beauty?"

He held up what looked like a golf-ball-sized mass of pale occluded crystals and plastic orbs from which a number of wire loops protruded. Stepping over a box of what looked like multicolored florets of broccoli to get a closer look, Will leaned from side to side, trying to see if the object became recognisable from a different angle. "I suppose? What is it?"

Delighted to show off his handiwork, David took a deep breath to launch into a little lecture. "It's a..." His face fell, and he licked his lips as he thought. "Er, there's no word for this in English. I mean, the concept doesn't even exist here yet, in any language." He shrugged, giving up on the train of thought. "It's a component of the gravitic anomaliser, is what it is. But you know, I told myself I wouldn't talk your ears off about silly things like this, when you can't possibly be interested in what I'm saying."

"Never mind that. Does that mean you're done with the... whatever that's for?"

"Oh, no." He brandished the object in front of Will's face. "I need to build five more of these to put in that array" - he pointed at a metal framework with six settings arranged in an octahedron - "and then I build the rest of the anomaliser around it."

Will stared at the object in David's hand, then at the lattice it was meant to occupy. "Just that bit took you three days? This whole thing is going to take you forever to complete."

"I'd thought it would be about two years, but I'm finding I have to improvise quite a bit." He considered for a bit, his eyes wandering around the chamber. "With what I have left to do, it'll probably be more like five years in total."

Will's jaw dropped in horror. "I'd no idea you'd be stranded here for so long!"

"It's but a blink of an eye to a Time Lord, a real one." His attitude was matter-of-fact, almost as if he were talking about someone he'd only read about in a book. "For me, well, the time goes by like it always does. I suppose in a couple hundred years, I'll look back, and it'll seem like it had been just a passing moment."

"A couple hundred years." Will shook his head, his hand over his mouth. "I just cannot imagine that."

"Neither can I, to tell the truth. I'm forty years old." He shrugged. "That's how old I feel. Well, no, I feel younger, like thirty. Always have. Age is a matter of mindset, you know. Two hundred seems such a long time from now, but, you see, five years is nothing compared to that, and anyway, I'm enjoying every minute of it." David's smile was completely genuine.

"Speaking of which, that's why I came by today." Will pulled two slips of paper from his jacket pocket and held them up. "Markus got a stack of tickets to a performance of _A Comedy of Errors_ tonight. He didn't want them going to waste, so he asked if I knew anyone who'd want to go. I thought you might be interested."

Will had been right: David perked up at the suggestion. "That's the one put on by the Purcell Players, isn't it? That amateur theatre group in town?"

"Yup. I'm surprised you know them."

"Well, that's because..." He glanced away in embarrassment.

"What?"

David's voice turned quiet and shy, to the point where Will strained to hear him. "I went out this week and joined them. Well, volunteered. Put my name on the list to play extras. I thought, well, acting has always been my love, and I can't see why I shouldn't do it as a hobby."

"Good on you, mate!" Will hopped over the stuff on the floor to clap his friend on the shoulder. "You're really branching out!"

"I'm just doing what you advised, to be who I want to be, at least as far as I can. Of course, with that and my work in Glasgow, it'll slow my work on the TARDIS even more, but that just means I'll be here longer, and I think I can live with that." David seemed pleased with his decision.

"That's good to hear."

"So, er, yes, I would love to attend the theatre tonight. Thanks for the invitation." He made a mock-formal bow to his friend. "What time is the play?"

"Six-thirty."

David nodded. "It's four-seventeen right now, so you'll probably want to get dinner. I could whip up some grilled chicken and cauliflower, if you like." He started to put some of his tools away, which, to his friend, seemed like a futile effort in the midst of the chaos of the room.

Will was hasty in his refusal of the offer. "Mate, if it's all the same to you, I'd really rather you not cook."

A surprised eyebrow shot up. "You don't like my cooking?"

Grimacing with embarrassment, Will replied quietly, "I'm sorry, mate, but no. Your food really isn't that good."

David shrugged, suppressing his hurt pride. "I can only get better with practice."

"I'd rather you practise on your own time. You know," and he wagged a finger at David, "do you think that it might be a problem of your tastes being different from mine? I mean, the Time Lords' planet -"

"Gallifrey."

"Right. Gallifrey must have had different foods, right? Different animals and plants. So when you're experimenting, you're making it to your tastes, not mine."

David pursed his lips and nodded as he thought. "You might be right. Perhaps I should stick to the recipe when cooking for you."

"Perhaps we should just go to the pub by the theatre," Will suggested with a mischievous lilt in his voice. "Come on. I'm parched."

"All right. Let me secure the -" David's last words sounded like nonsense to Will, and he held up the object he had built to indicate what he meant. Hopping over the mess on the floor, he placed the thing into one of the settings and adjusted what looked like clips to secure it. Muttering "sonic" under his breath, he plunged a hand into his pocket but came up empty. Glancing around at the different work tables, he spied his mobile sitting on the workbench he'd been working at. "Ah, there it is."

Will hopped over a box of components to snatch up the phone. Weaving around a table, he handed it to David, who immediately applied it to the lattice setting. When the familiar trilling noise ceased, he tapped the object to make sure it was stable, then nodded, dropping the mobile into his pocket. "There. That's done."

"Wish I could be of more use to you than just handing you your tools," Will remarked as he stared at the finished device, "but I suppose I can't even begin to understand what you're doing, can I?"

"You're far more help than you realise, Will." Biting his lip, David paused for a moment, then pressed his lips together in a thin line as he made up his mind. "You know, last week... I didn't realise it before, but I needed that. I needed to tell someone. You _know_. Maybe you don't believe any of it -"

"I do." Even though he was still a bit iffy on the whole thing, Will was quick to assure his friend, but David waved him silent.

"No, I know you can't possibly believe all of it, but it doesn't matter. I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel lighter and stronger, because I've shared this with you." His eyes shone with shy appreciation. "Thank you."

"Any time, mate." Will clapped David on the shoulder. "A burden shared is a burden lightened."

"I know someone who would do well to learn that." David turned to the console to pat it affectionately, then grinned at Will. "Come on, I'm famished." Thrusting his hand in his pocket, he fished out his necklace and strung it around his neck.

Will rolled his eyes. "No, you're not," he chided as he turned to trot out. "You never are."

"I can pretend." Dropping the pendant under his shirt, David pulled off his apron and threw it over a box as he followed his friend. "I'll get the fish and chips and you can have the chips. I never finish them."

"Deal," Will agreed as he held the door open for David, and they stepped out of the TARDIS and headed out for the evening.

* * *

 **Author's note** : Thank you so very much for reading my story!


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